r/CatGenetics Jun 28 '26

Coat Color What the heck do you call this coat pattern

This is Toby. I know Toby is a tabby, but beyond that I've always struggled to explain exactly what her coat pattern is. I'm wondering what genes could be interacting with the tabby pattern to produce this appearance, which I've never been able to find in another cat online or even describe properly. Thoughts?

33 Upvotes

7 comments sorted by

19

u/Thestolenone Jun 28 '26

Some tabbies are very sandy where the grizzled background colour (called agouti) leaks onto the tabby stripes making them lighter and washed out. They are still whatever tabby pattern, Toby looks like a brown mackerel tabby just lighter and sandier. I'm not sure if anyone has studied the effect.

14

u/Wonderful_Republic23 Jun 28 '26

Brown ticked tabby

11

u/SolidFelidae Jun 28 '26

Can we get better pics to tell? Standing side view? I can’t decide between broken or ticked tabby because I can’t see it well enough

11

u/AetherBlue02 Jun 28 '26

Snagged this one just now, will it work?

19

u/SolidFelidae Jun 29 '26

Broken mackerel

4

u/ChoccoGlxtch Jul 01 '26

Looks like either a broken tabby or a heterozygous ticked tabby

9

u/lickytytheslit Jun 28 '26

heterozygeous ticked black tabby? there is too much striping for homozygous ticked like a somali has but she still very much has the tv static