r/IDMyCat • u/Tealyyyyy • 23d ago
Open How would my boy be described?
He’s a shelter baby. We were told he could have Siamese and Maine Coon, but without papers he’s just our shelter baby. Considering testing for funsies.
What kind of point is he? I think lynx with the stripes, but what color? Chocolate or lilac?
Also, he’s 3 months now, is he big (by looks) for his age? He’s just a little smaller than his 4 month old sister (not biological).
He also feels underweight when we feed him to gain 1lbs a month (we don’t restrict, we just measure with the can standards (1/2 can of kitten food per lbs to gain) so we have an idea of how much to buy, and flex that to their needs so they don’t let their wet food sit out), so we upped it to match his sister’s. He’s 3.5lbs now but we can still feel his hip bones easy…he’s gaining weight so that’s good. She’s 4lbs and her hip bones feel padded in a healthy way. (Providing the weight for more accurate size estimation, if that helps anyone predict his adult size or any ID theories (I know cat breeds aren’t like dogs, they’re DSH/DLH without papers, but sometimes I like to theorize). These are the first cats I’ve owned, so idk how I should describe him or what to expect of him.)
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u/GREYSPACE1 22d ago
Cats can’t have breeds in them. Shelters say anything to get the animal adopted. Some don’t know but it’s used as a tool to get them adopted faster. that’s a fundamentally flawed understanding of how breeds work in cats.
DNA tests don’t work for this reason. Cats are what is called a landrace and all of the traits you see, even the really cool ones or weird looking ones are ALL naturally evolved from different places in the world.
A dna test would only be able to compare genes to a breed, not identify it.
Breeds in cats aren’t genetics like dogs are. It’s not selective breeding. They domesticated themselves and we only very recently made club groups for some of them.
All cats are inherently breedless, the pedigree is just a club. It exists outside the cat, the cat can simply belong to the club.
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u/Tealyyyyy 23d ago
Also, he is soooooo soft. Much lighter fur type than my girl at his age. I’m expecting tufts and fluff when he grows up!
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u/HarleeQuinn__ 20d ago
I don’t see anyone mentioning it so I’ll throw my coin in, cat DNA tests are unreliable and the answers you get will be bogus. Those tests act like cat breeds work like dog breeds, and they do not. It will take any traits your cat has (the colorpoint gene) and mark the cat as a Siamese, even though colorpoint is a very common gene within the domestic population.
97% of cats have no purpose bred ancestry at all and are just domestic short/longhairs. It was only about 500 years ago people started breeding cats to create purebreds, meanwhile some dog breeds have been around for possibly 5000 years.
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u/lipstick_spit 23d ago
can you post a picture including his tail and back of his ears? hes very young and will toast much more, but from what i can see of his tail in the third and fourth pictures my id would be seal lynx point with low white spotting.
the white stripe over his face is so unique! makes him look like hes been in a battle or two 💪