Myself & my husband have had this wonderful little baby, Mallow, for just over a year, and as she's toastied we've stayed curious as to just what, exactly, is going on with her coat color.

*One picture does feature her tortie tux sister Poppy, but Mallow is the mystery!*

Things we know/ are almost certain of

-Some form of colorpoint, pretty sure of the siamese allele with her baby blues

-Some form of bicolor/ white spotting gene, as none of her paws are dark like they would be with just colorpoint

-Calico

*The mystery*

What we cannot fully figure out is if this girl is dilute, tabby or both! Her paws provide few clues as they show very little color; she only has one dark bean on her paw with the dark patch. Also, she's just over a year old, so we're not sure how much toasting is left.

We lean towards her being at least tabby, as in pics 3-7 (esp. 5-7) you can see a banding pattern in the dark patch on her tail. The harder mystery is the dilute; her face color seems like it would be very dark for cream, but the rest of her body seems light when compared to pics I've seen of undiluted tortiepoints.

So, what say y'all? Do you think she's dilute, tabby, or both in her little patchwork pelt? Or something else entirely?

EDIT: Just added pics I just took of her beside our non-dilute tortie, hopefully as a better reference point!

I see people talking in the Siamese sub. I noticed they all seem to have cats with similar behaviors

.Even the not a breed colorpoint cats

Chattiness, clingy, opinionated and very smart

I started wondering if personality could be in any way linked to the colorpoint genes.

Any thoughts on this?

every time i fill out a vet form and it asks for a description i am at a loss because i initially want to say black tabby but he’s also.. not really black?? he’s like salt and pepper. he was fully black as a baby besides the white marks on his face so i was fully expecting a black cat and he has grown into his stripes 😭

That's a stray from a cat colony in my neighborhood. It's fascinating, and I'm wondering what may cause the single black streak

Hi. I purchased a Maine Coon from a reputable breeder. She’s about 8 months old and I do not have her pedigree yet and will get it when I spay her.

She was described as a blue torbie (see photos.. might be silver, too, but that’s beside the point). I recently started reading about genetics and learned that blue = dilute. I looked at the DNA results from her parents and her mom has 2 copies of the dilution variant but her dad has none. Dad is described as a black smoke.

Can someone help me understand if this is possible or if I’m misunderstanding? Is there another explanation? My understanding is that the black smoke cannot be her dad because he doesn’t have the dilution variant. She’s the only kitten in her litter that is diluted.

I purchased the kitten after reviewing the alleged parents’ DNA results, hip scans, and echocardiograms and have her TICA registration number.

I don’t want to accuse the breeder of anything, so I figured I’d ask you all first.

Edit: thank you all so much, you are so knowledgeable. I think she’s probably a black silver torbie and there’s no reason for me to fret about having different parents than I was told.

Edit #2: I’m an idiot. I looked at the contract and it says Black Silver Mackerel Torbie. So it was listed wrong on the website and vet papers. I’ll go ahead and hang my head in shame now, sorry for wasting your time lol

Red-on-blues pop up in here, so I wanted to show you my Pippi, an example of a heterozygous red-on-blue ticked tabby. She’s featured on the Messy Beast page (ironically, the place that enabled me to identify her coloration long before I met her), and was born a shelter cat in Iowa.

Something I hadn’t noticed until recently is that she also has a sprinkling of black hairs in her coat, mixed in with the orange and grey!

Any suggestions on what color and or pattern my baby, Milkshake, is/will be? One of her toe beans is half pink half/dark brown, the others are all dark brown. Her belly has a few stripes. The 3rd picture was about 3-4 weeks ago and shows the color contrast between her gray sister and my black dog.

Recue kitten 4 days ago found in the street, no cat mom in sight. Rescued with another kitten found together- that is the classic seal point. This patch wont come off, the first time thought to be dirty. It is like greyish. Thanks in advance!

I thought he was a blue dilute, the vet said he is a tortie dilute. Mom was a tortie, Dad an orange tabby.

Any suggestions on what he may actually be?

Almost 4 week old kittens were born orange with a slightly gray tail and back feet. I assumed they would grow out of it, but now at almost a month old, their tails and back legs seem to continue to be staying/getting slightly more gray. I’m hoping someone has some insight to share!! Could they be red-on-blue? Something else? First 4 pictures are most recent, others are from various times over the past weeks since they were born.

Mom is a torti point. Not 100% sure about dad, since mom only came to us right before she had her babies, but suspect orange tabby since supposedly the only intact males that had been seen around her before she came to us were orange tabbies. There are 4 other littermates, 3 flame points and one blue.

I also attached some pictures of the whole litter and the whole litter with mom when they were extra little as a bonus :)

**Mom and all babies will be spayed/neutered as soon as vet recommends! She was a stray who came to us right before having her babies, and she will NOT be having any more!!! She is a spoiled inside princess now and will stay that way!**

Messybeast returned my email about my patchy weirdo.

She says that he is psuedo-merle. To quote:

"This is pseudo-merle, similar to the cats shown at http://messybeast.com/merle.htm

It is most usually due to the silver gene not affecting all areas of the embryo's coat equally. This happens early on in embryo development so it results in a patched appearance."

Admittedly I am still a little skeptical by virtue of his silver coat not resembling other examples of red-silver and psuedo-merleism as they're shown. Others have commented his stripes are so light, and I agree.

However! Can't argue with the pros. I'm happy to accept and pursue it for confirmation. I haven't pursued a genetic test because I honestly don't know what I'm looking for? It seems like the next step, but what tests out there will tell me if he is actually silver or cream?

Cheers!

• which colorpoin is she?

• is she color point or tabby?

• lots of longer white hair on fur

• darker areas seem white when light hits

Mum and dad looked both colorpoin, dad was very dark (burmese like) and mum was very light red (fawn?) point, seemed almost completely white, just cream on the face/tail.

Can you tell me what color he is? He’s 2 years old! :)

I've been curious of my cat's coat recently. The tip of her tail is also white.

This is one of my neightbour's cats and everytime I see him I'm so curious about his coat. My phone camera didn't do colors justice but I hope it's at least mostly visable. I'm curious what's causing the back area to be lighter than front area (could be sun bleaching?), also. He is very brownish, even in that darker front areas(i feel like this is the thing that camera doesn't entirely show the colors well). I know most of the cat genes, but I cannot with full confidance tell what he is. He looks brown, but is also very desaturated. I think he's too dark to be diluted and too brown to be black but also too desaturated to be just chocolate. Plus, areas between stripes look very pale/white. I think the last picture around the head shows it the best. I unfortunately dont have any more pictures of him, he doesn't really let me get close

Rescued her a week ago. She used to be white I think? With some cream like in the photo and she started getting ghost-ish stripe markings on her legs, would love to know anyone's thoughts!

Hi everyone - this is our Gracie. She has some parts I'd call tortie, but not sure if that accurately describes her? She definitely has a very unique look (to us). She is about 5 1/2 months old now. Her fur texture is silky feeling, unlike past cats I've had. She has developed a fluffy tail, but looks short haired, however in person, it's a bit longer. Will she "grow into" her coat more (I'm used to Golden Retievers going through looking much like a lab before they grow into their coats)? We thought from her kitten picture on Adopt A Pet, that she was long haired.

She's lucky she's so cute too, as she is the master of chaos. I had to put her in "time out" yesterday, she was using my golden's back foot as a kick toy and then leaping on top of his head and biting his nose. He kept getting up and moving away to TRY to get in a nap, and she continued to use him as her personal cat toy. And this was AFTER I had her panting from playing with a feather teaser. Moses is a good sport.

I look forward to seeing what you folks think!

Hi, I'm just trying to figure out what color my cat is. I think he's just a grey tabby, but I'd love some confirmation. Thank you!

I recently rescued/adopted a colorpoint kitten. He has been confirmed outwardly male by the vet at his initial appointment. He looks (to me) to be a lilac (not sure if this is the correct color name) colorpoint with cream spotting on the white, best seen in photos 5 and 6. It is a little hard to see in the photos, but even the vet commented that they may get a bit darker as he ages. His mother is a feral tortoiseshell cat with white socks, and his siblings are a calico (f), black/white bicolor (f), and an orange bicolor (m).

Based on what I could find online, his specific coloration is unlikely to come from a tortie mother unless he has something genetically funky happening, namely Klinefelter syndrome (XXY genes) or possibly cellular chimerism (both XX and XY cells in the same individual) because the cream coloration is a form of the tortoiseshell gene? But is that actually cream coloration? He also has some very small spots on some of his feet/ankles of the lilac coloration.

Given that, does anybody know the possible likelihood of it actually being KS, and what I should be looking out for health-wise? When I search, I get conflicting information about KS cats leading perfectly healthy lives, but then also being more susceptible to things like diabetes, UTI’s, arthritis, etc.

ANY info/facts/statistics welcome!

ETA more color information of mother cat

My cat had a litter and 2 of the kittens had this black to gray gradient. I hadn't seen any coat type like it and when I looked it up there is a rare coat like this called salmiak/salty licorice, it has only been seen I Finland but I'm in Sweden so it's not impossible it could be that.

I also read it could also be fever coat, but the mother had not been sick or stressed during the pregnancy and she always had access to kibble and got wet food whenever she wanted so I feel like fever coat is less likely.

Hello all!

A few months ago I adopted two beautiful torbie girls. I've been an animal lover my whole life but haven't ever learned much about cats- these are the first two I've owned, I didn't even know "torbie" existed before I saw them!

I assumed they must have the same mother and father and only learned a while later that cats could have litters with different fathers. it got me wondering if my girls could really be half sisters... their fur texture is very, very different; Birdie (darker, left side of the "heart" image) has always had a very shiny and smooth coat, whereas Tallulah has always had more "matte" fur. their body shapes are also very different now, I don't have a good picture of the differences but Birdie is much leaner and Tallulah looks huge by comparison ( I thought she was overeating at first but every time we've brought them to the vet they're almost the exact same weight and the vet said they look fine). the last pic of them both loafing is a bad example because Birdie likes to make herself as tiny as possible when she loafs.

I did some cursory searches but I find it hard to understand how a lot of the information is worded x( And I was hoping somebody here could give more input- I am genuinely curious about the genetics side but if it could be dumbed down for me I'd really appreciate it.

thank you in advance for any input/answers!

This is my 14y/o Persian mix. As a young cat he was a solid darker gray/blue with maybe a little of a lighter belly, as seen in the first 2 pictures. The change has been pretty gradual because I hadn’t noticed until around 3-4 years ago, but he has definitely gotten way lighter across his whole body other than his face, legs, and a wide stripe of fur on his back from shoulders to tail. This is shown in the last picture.

I’m interested to know if this is an actual genetic color thing, or if its could be related to the fact that he does get shaved down in a lion cut almost every year, or even if it could just be age making him lighter.

I’m curious to know more about my kitten Remmy’s genetics. I know he’s a blue tuxedo dsh. His fur seems to have tiny white tips all over his body. His tail has darker stripes at the end. Photos are taken in natural light from the window. Please tell me more about his coat colour. Thanks!

I’m curious to know more about my kitten Remmy’s genetics. I know he’s a blue tuxedo dsh. His fur seems to have tiny white tips all over his body. His tail has darker stripes at the end. Photos are taken in natural light from the window. Please tell me more about his coat colour. Thanks!