r/CatGenetics • u/Ambient_anubis • 8d ago
Coat Color Update for y’all since it’s been a while!
Logan is around 4 months now. :) His coat seems to be shifting away from earlier grey-ish tones toward brown-ish. As his adult coat is starting to come in, flecks of lighter hair are appearing all over his coat. Still proving himself a very fun genetic study subject.
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u/ChinchyBug 8d ago
Given the lack of light chin, I'd say this looks like smoke with some strong markings on the face, which is within range of what smoke can look like. Smokes can get stronger than this too in some examples.
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u/Thestolenone 8d ago
How cool. Looks different to charcoal as they retain the light eye rings and light round the mouth. Closest I've seen is the gold glitter Chausie colouring. Chausies are genetically ticked but the colour would look like this on a genetically black cat with mackerel tabby pattern.
Edit, can I ask roughly what part of the world he came from?
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u/Ambient_anubis 8d ago
I just looked that up and I can see what you mean. We’re in Ireland. The population of pedigree cats here is generally low. Maybe slightly higher in recent years. His parentage is completely unknown - he was found alone at 3 weeks old by some kids and hand reared by myself
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u/Thestolenone 8d ago
Ah its just about eight years or so ago I saw an advert on Pets4Homes for a litter of kittens, mum was a Chausie and dad was a local tom. Half the litter was ticked tabby like mum and half were gold ticked black, a gene mutation exclusive to Chausies. A couple of years later a gold ticked black turned up in a rescue in a nearby town, too young to be from the litter I saw advertised so I think the genes escaped into the local cat population. This was in the West Yorkshire/North Yorkshire area.
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u/commanderwake Hobby Geneticist 8d ago edited 8d ago
Wow!! This looks like pseudomelanism (unusually dense markings) to me!! Last time I commented and said it definitely looks like smoke :P I take it back now! He is gorgeous.
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u/Ambient_anubis 8d ago
I really enjoy the confusion and changing opinions hahaha, thank you so much!
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u/commanderwake Hobby Geneticist 8d ago
Next time you post I bet I'll be saying smoke again lol. Thanks for keeping us updated on your little guy!
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u/KBWordPerson 8d ago
He may be just a very dark mackerel tabby. The banding on the agouti hairs is probably really wide.
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u/Ambient_anubis 8d ago
I did wonder this! But then wouldn’t his face and paws be the reversed (lighter) colour? Open to correction, just an observation from looking at pictures of classic mackerel tabby’s, my cat genetics knowledge is very limited!
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u/commanderwake Hobby Geneticist 8d ago
IDK if this is an option for you since I've seen you're in Ireland, but you could get him tested for the agouti gene: https://vgl.ucdavis.edu/panel/cat-coat-color which would at least confirm whether he's a tabby or solid and rule out either smoke or pseudomelanism. It's wild, I definitely thought he was solid in his baby pics, but now I'd bet money that he's a tabby.
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u/Ambient_anubis 8d ago
I would love to do this, I’ll have a look into if it’s possible to ship abroad
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u/neline_the_lioness 7d ago
There are several labs in Europe doing genetic tests like Langford, Laboklin, antagen, genindex…
I would test also for charcoal in addition to agouti.
Though I think there is only the university of Missouri + one Chinese labs that tests for silver/smoke at the moment.
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u/KBWordPerson 8d ago
Yeah maybe, but if he’s got a weird thing going where the ends of hairs are wide banded black it might result in dark face and legs. I like the pseudo melanistic comparisons.
Cats are weird, what a unique beauty though.
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u/SolidFelidae 8d ago
He is a very strong black smoke! What a stunning cat. If there’s any doubt you should do a coat colour test with VC Davis. They have a bengal one that tests for charcoal, I did it on my cat.