# Explain my cat markings and colour please



## shawdavi (Mar 26, 2010)

My cat just had 10 kittens. Some of them have tabby marked legs and head with light grey solid torso...no swirl or pattern in the coat. Even the orange tabby kitten has an unusual pattern. How did this happen genetically? Any info would help. Thanks.


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## Heidi n Q (Nov 22, 2006)

Welcome. You're probably going to get a little more information than you bargained for. :mrgreen: 
...and TEN KITTENS, wow! :yikes 

It sounds like this litter is all solid kittens?
Is the mother a solid color or is she tabby marked?
Could any of these kittens have Siamese genes?
Do you know who the male cat was?

Cats are either black or red based. Diluting their base-coat turns them blue (gray) or cream (pale red). _There are more colors, but basically; black and red for this discussion._
AGOUTI is the gene that causes cats to vividly express their tabby pattern.
All cats have a tabby pattern; Abyssinian (ticked), Classic (swirl) and Mackerel (striped, broken striped or spotted) but without agouti, the cat will look solid black or blue. As kittens, and even as adults, you can sometimes see faint tabby markings, called countershading. What that is, is their true tabby pattern ... but without agouti to band the hair-shafts, the tabby pattern won't be readily visible.
Another thing about agouti, is it will not affect red hair, so red cats will *always* express their tabby pattern ... but because agouti has no effect on red, their hair will not be banded like black/blue tabbies.
heidi =^..^=

_Here is a topic I started to catalogue various members' cats so I could see and discuss the various different combinations and expressions of their genes:_
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=54570


This is copy/pasted from another reply discussing cat breeds, as in someone asking what breed is their new cat they just adopted. It has the same information, but more detail.
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Absolutely no way of knowing what, if any definite breed, stray cats are. 

The thing about cat genetics, is all of the genes for every characteristic are "out there" in various combinations. In the early years, geographical isolation kept many cat 'breeds' pure or limited in color and body conformation expression. As people became more mobile and traveled the world, all it took was for someone to become enamored of a cat (_bird, dog, horse, livestock..._), bring a few specimens back home with them and begin breeding them together to create a breed. Many other general breeds were simply people collecting cats with similar characteristics and selectively breeding and culling until they had a breeding population that bred true every time.

Examples of this would be ‘color breeds’ like the Siamese cat and the 'blue' cats; Russian Blue, Chartreaux, Korat and British Shorthair. All of these breeds were deliberately bred to *keep* particular traits, which in turn *eliminated* 'wild-card' traits until the cats always bred true because certain genetics were bred out of the population.
All Siamese cats are homozygous (_matched gene pair_) for the recessive (_needs 2 copies to express_) pointed gene. The Meezers AND the Blue cats have also been selectively bred to eliminate the agouti gene. Agouti is the gene responsible for making a cat's tabby pattern be readily visible. All cats carry a version of the tabby gene (_Classic - blotched, Abyssinian - ticked and Mackerel - striped, broken striped and spotted_) but without the agouti gene, they will present as a solid colored cat. Additionally, in the case of the 'blues', they have been selectively bred to be homozygous for the recessive "dense" gene, which dilutes black coats to blue.
Some people began to breed agouti back into the Siamese breed to create “Lynx Point”, with tabby markings on their points. A new breed category was created to classify them, called “Colorpoint”; which includes Lynx, the Reds, Tortoiseshells and their dilute versions.

Tortoiseshell is remarkable because the cat carries both black (o) and red (O) on her pair of XX genes. Females are XX and can carry a color on each X gene. Males are XY and only carry color on the X gene. This is why male calicos are rare because they would have to be a genetic oddity with XXY. Tortie/Torbie cats with White Spotting are commonly called “calico”, especially if their markings have definite patches of black, red and white. When the black and red are ‘marbled together’, that is called Tortoiseshell.
Torties do not carry agouti. Torties who do are called Torbies. Tortoiseshell + Tabby = Torbie. Agouti only affects *black* hair and has no effect on red hair. All red cats will show the countershading of their tabby pattern. Black-based cats can also show countershading, but it is sometimes difficult to see. 

So, while there are things I *can* tell about a cat's genetic make-up, there is no way to determine what, if any, breeds influenced them. With Siamese points and Persian smush-faces, it is *easy* to see what breed influenced them, but in general it is impossible to tell because all of these genes that influence color, markings, characteristics and body type are out there in many, _many_, combinations.


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## shawdavi (Mar 26, 2010)

Wow...that is a lot of helpful information. Thank you so much for your response. I tried to attach a photo of the mother and kittens, but it says my attachment is invalid. I am just new here so it will take me some time to figure things out.

The mother is a brown tabby mackeral type...with a bit of color tipping on the hair shaft. She was one of a litter of kittens we found in a rockpile in the forest when we were out on a walk near our farm. We rescued the kittens but kept this one...who now gave us ten kittens to find homes for. Time for a spay. 

On closer inspection the greyish kittens do have the faint tabby markings all over. But dark tabby legs/tail/head.


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## Cat24 (Mar 18, 2010)

so a tortie with the red parts banded different shade in the tabby pattern would be a torbie?


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## Heidi n Q (Nov 22, 2006)

shawdavi said:


> Wow...that is a lot of helpful information. Thank you so much for your response. I tried to attach a photo of the mother and kittens, but it says my attachment is invalid. I am just new here so it will take me some time to figure things out.
> On closer inspection the greyish kittens do have the faint tabby markings all over. But dark tabby legs/tail/head.


It almost sounds like your kittens could go either way... 8O ...I'd have to see a photo and even then it may be difficult to tell if the babies are very young or dilute (blue) in color.
The site's Photo Gallery has been inoperable for more than a year since it filled its' available server space and more space has not been added. Most of us will host our photos at a website that allows sharing/linking. I like to use PhotoBucket because it is free and easy for me to use, but there are also other photo hosting sites.
I would love to see photos!



Cat24 said:


> so a tortie with the red parts banded different shade in the tabby pattern would be a torbie?


No, your kitty Camo is a Tortie because she does not have the agouti gene. Since red fur will always show their tabby markings, that cannot be used to determine Torbie. It is the *black* fur that determine Tortie/Torbie by showing evidence of agouti or not. I'll post some examples.

These are Torties.
Note the solid black markings and how their tabby stripe patterns show up in their red areas. Many Torties are very mottled with their black and red and the red is too broken up to see the underlying tabby pattern.






























These are Torbies.
Note the all-over tabby pattern expression in the colored areas. Because agouti only affects black fur, only their black areas will express the hairshaft color-bands and ticking while the red areas remain mostly red along the entire hairshaft without seperate bands of color.























It can be very difficult to tell between Tortie and Torbie:
Pic 1. These kittens show the variation between dense color and dilute. The dense one is an obvious Torbie, but the dilute kitten makes it difficult to tell with her pale coloring, even though I can see tabby markings on her forehead I cannot see any striping over her back/sides and this makes me suspect she does not have agouti and the markings I am seeing on her head are countershading.
Pic 2. The blue and cream Torbie is very pale, but you can still faintly see the tabby pattern on the chest and over her sides.
Pic 3. The blue and cream Tortie shows faint countershaded tabby markings on her head but no obvious tabby markings over the rest of her body.























This photo shows a fabulous example of dense and dilute kittens:
I *think* the four dilute (blue) kittens along the bottom are solid, without agouti. The upper five kittens are all dense and definitely have agouti. In the upper row, kittens six and seven are both dilute (blue and cream) and I think the blue kitten is a tabby with agouti because of the striping pattern I can see over its' sides.









The center kitten has agouti and the kittens to L and R do not and are solid blue and black.


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## kwarendorf (Oct 12, 2009)

Heidi n Q said:


>


I don;t know anything about genetics, but I love this pic


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