Cat Moon

We have a cat named Miranda. As you can see, she’s got a mottled coat, with no two areas exactly the same shape and with an underlying “white” coat overlain by other regions of different-colored hair.

When we got her, we were casting about for a name and I happened to be looking at pictures of the moon Miranda. It occurred to me that, like that moon, our cat had white “surface units” overlaid by other mottled, oddly shaped surface units.

Miranda (the cat) came by her mottled “surface” through a combination of genetic factors inherited from both her parents.

She’s a calico cat, in much the same way that you can think of Miranda the moon as a calico moon, marked with oddly shaped regions and different colors for each of the regions.

The “genetic” components that shaped the surface of Miranda (the moon) have more to do with physical processes like gravitation and the melting point of water ice.

The scientific consensus is that this moon, with its icy grooves and cliffs, has been deformed by a process called tidal heating.  What this means is that Miranda, which is largely water ice, was affected by tidal forces from Uranus early in this moon’s history. The gravitational tugs from Uranus deformed the moon slightly, causing some interior heating.  That heat melted the ice inside of Miranda, and chunks of it likely “floated” to the surface and then froze. That process (which is complex) caused the wrinkles and ridges, troughs and gullies we see today.  No cat fur, but still a mottled, calico surface on a distant moon!