octopedal

— Had an octopedal cat presented herself to Noah, that astute mariner would unquestionably have refused to give her permission to enter the ark, out of a sense of duty to his confiding mice and birds. Neither Noah nor Moses ever heard of a cat with eight feet, and hence the sudden production of such an animal in the nineteenth century is clearly a blow at the Mosaic theory of creation, and an effort to prove that the theory of development is true.