# Have you seen this before? coloring/genetics?



## KittyFosterMama (Apr 6, 2015)

I work at an animal shelter, and I have been fostering for them for the past year. Mostly bottle fed kittens and a few puppies here and there. This year we have started taking home not only bottle fed babies, but nursing mothers and their litter. I brought home April, who is a tortishell. She has 3 kittens in her litter, Joker, Harley, and Quinn. One of which is solid black with a small white patch on her chest. The other 2 are *POINTED*.....That's right, like a siamese. The male is a lighter beige with a pink nose and the female is a darker beige with the black nose. So my question is.....How in the world does that happen? Does the dad have to be part siamese or something? This is one of the most unique things I have ever seen. Everyone at my workplace is baffled by this.


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## Marmoset (Feb 18, 2014)

I have seen it actually. We had two silver pointed kittens from our calico and one tortie who looked like that mamma. One possibility is that those two kittens had a different father.


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## catloverami (Jul 5, 2010)

The "Siamese gene" is recessive, so both the sire and dam had to have the gene for pointed kittens to appear in a mixed litter like you have. It's possible for a dam to have more than one sire, and it could have been pointed in color, but also possible that the sire was not expressing the pointed color and judging from your litter likely _black_ but carried the pointed gene recessively. 

For example, my Devon Rex boy Zuba is registered as a _seal-silver & white lynx point_ in color.....His sire was_ black smoke and white_, his dam was _white_ with gold eyes. I know of a certainty that his maternal granddam was a _seal point_ Devon, anda a great grandam on his sire's side was a _pointed_ cat. I don't know the color of other kittens in his litter as I got him when he was 4 mos. old and never saw his siblings if he had any. Yes, you got a rainbow litter for sure.....lovely!

Siamese Cat Genetics | General Cat Articles


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