Caturday: What Color Is Your Cat Really?

It's Caturday, and we're geeking out about coat colors and patterns and genetics. Well, technically I'm geeking out and the cats are just chilling. They're not that into genetics. Anyway, I recently pondered whether there was a feline equivalent to Dog Coat Colour Genetics, my favorite website for learning about this kind of stuff. Sure enough, I found MessyBeast, a site maintained by someone who, I can only assume, is the very best kind of cat geek.

Feel the love!

Color Charts

The first cat color chart I ever saw was this magnificent illustration by Joumana Medlej. I'd love to reproduce it here, but I haven't asked the artist's permission so I recommend going and looking at it yourself. Seriously. 

The first time I laid eyes on that chart, I was compelled to figure out precisely what color cats I had. I was visiting a cat-loving friend at the time, and we were both excitedly picking cat hairs off our shirts to examine. 

From that chart, I learned that James is a brown tabby. I had always described him as grey, but technically he is a brown tabby. His pattern is mackerel, and he has a white chin and belly and feetsies, so he is a brown mackerel tabby with white. Specifically, he has grade 4 white spotting.

Solstice is a tortoiseshell, which I've always known. There are a bunch of special tortie colors and patterns though. If they have tabby striped, they can be called a 'patched tabby' or a 'torbie' depending on where you live. 

Kitty colors and patterns can be affected by dilution, and various patterns can be combined. You can have a dilute tabby, or a tortoiseshell color-pointed cat (like a Siamese) that's mostly cream-colored with black and orange blotched points. The way all the different aspects combine tickles my brain in the most delightful way.

Behold, Science!

MessyBeast goes a step further, and actually illustrates all the color and pattern combinations. They also explain the genetics and developmental conditions behind various colors. Like, the reason your piebald cat's black spots look like they fit together like puzzle pieces, is because at one point during embryonic development, they did! MessyBeast even delves into hypothetical colors that have not been seen in cats, like tan points and merle, and colors observed but lost to history, like Barrington Brown.

So, what color is your cat?

The Development of Ticking

I love reading about coat color genetics, and describing dogs that I meet. One of the things that really fascinates me is the development of ticking, the distinctive mottled pattern found on Australian cattledogs. Dogs with the ticking gene are born white, if they are to have any solid-colored patches, they will have those at birth.

I have been working with a litter of Australian cattledog puppies since they were born in December, and watching their coats change has been delightful. When they were around two weeks old we attempted to line them all up for a picture, like I see all the time of adorable litters of puppies. They did not cooperate. At all.

Fortunately, one of the primary things I have been doing with these puppies is to help document their growth and development, and to take pictures to help get them adopted.

3 weeks

Here is one of the puppies at 3 weeks old. Dexter started out with black eye patches and back patches, with the rest of his body solid white. At three weeks he was beginning to develop little freckles on his feetsies.

5 weeks
Photo by Erin Koski

By  5 weeks his ticking had developed considerably.

12 weeks

At 12 weeks he was very spotty indeed.

18 weeks

At 18 weeks he was pretty solidly roaned, and also totally adorable. I have this same photo series for seven of these guys.

3 weeks

                                              

This is Opie at three weeks. At first we thought he might be liver-colored instead of black like a proper cattledog. For a puppy to end up liver-colored, both parents would have to carry the recessive gene, and cattledogs shouldn't have it at all.

5 weeks
Photo by Erin Koski

At five weeks he was more obviously genetically black with a red modifier.

9 weeks

See how his eye patches spread to meet in the middle? I believe he is a shaded sable (red with some black hairs), while the other red puppies are clear sables (no black hairs). 

Brisbane is also a shaded sable.

18 weeks

He doesn't appear to be getting appreciably darker between 9 and 18 weeks. His little half-mustache has disappeared into his ticking.

Brisbane had a similar pattern of color development as a baby. He developed ticking on his feet and face, and his white areas got smaller and in some cases disappeared. Has your dog's coat changed since you got them?