Hi, I'm Sparrow! This is my general WC blog. I'm best known for being that person that made the genetics calculators, but sometimes I do designs and stuff too! Icon by @tillythehyena (pride-ified by me).
Hello! If you can’t see the links, for whatever reason, here is my page full of links.
And here is a direct link to my website, Sparrow's Garden.
Before Asking
- Before asking a genetics question, please at least read the Intro to Genetics page on my website, and check if any other articles on the site are applicable. If you have read that page, I can answer just about anything from that foundation. If you don't understand things on that page, please let me know so that I can help, and hopefully update the page to be clearer!
- I’m best versed in cat genetics, but I do also know/can easily find things about other mammals, and don’t mind answering those questions here! Any posts from this point forwards with those will be tagged with “[the animal] genetics” and “not cats”.
- Absolutely no "I'm not smart enough for this lol" is allowed. If you don't want to learn and just want to watch or have me proof your tree, cool! If you want to learn, you absolutely can and I won't take people putting themselves down for not understanding something on the first try. It's literally my job to explain this stuff, if it's not working for some people that is a problem that needs to be fixed!
- Also, you’re of course more than welcome to ask about other WC related stuff too! I have currently only read the first arc, a handful of super editions, and am currently working on DoTC, and keep up with the rough continuity through osmosis.
- I may take a ridiculously long time to answer. Although I aspire to answer more often, this is normal. When I do answer, I try to clear out everything at once and then put out a notice that the askbox is clean, so if tumblr ate it you can resubmit.
- I am more than happy to be a genetics consultant for larger projects, for proofing family trees, etc. Feel free to dm me if it'll take more than a few asks/submissions!
so btw i have been toying with my wc rewrite/au again and i do want to share but i have no idea where to start. a lot of it is the same as earlier stuff i did share but a lot it has changed
I talked about it very briefly in a post a while back, but the big thing that differentiates the current AU (yet unnamed) I'm working on from the prior one is the span of time covered.
Four Fates was ultimately intended to be a kinder timeline for Bluestar, Crookedstar, Tallstar, and Yellowfang, and I still really love that idea, but then it also had later arcs tacked on in a manner that was fairly awkward. So I split the concept into Four Fates and the yet-unnamed AU/rewrite, which just starts with the canon first arc. Though I may well end up writing stories about the prequel cats there too.
I've also waffled back and forth on how I want to handle the setting a lot, by which I mean, where exactly it is set and how the territories look due to that. I'm sticking firmly to a fictionalized area of Dartmoor now, which actually makes research much easier. That's also entailed a lot of migrating and researching and rewriting old notes.
And then, as Feline Fiction folk know, I've also been working a ton on the catlang again for fun. So I'll sit down to nail down a timeline thing or two, make an addition or alteration to the family tree, need a rename for a cat, the new prefix list isn't done yet so then I'll bounce to research notes and name the thing for the catlang as well…and on and on and on like that. Great hobby for my very ADHD brain, but not great for sharing specifics because everything is constantly under revision!
so btw i have been toying with my wc rewrite/au again and i do want to share but i have no idea where to start. a lot of it is the same as earlier stuff i did share but a lot it has changed
Spikefur! He is a new apprentice in Bramblestar's Storm, and is Pinenose's mate by A Vision of Shadows. Despite being a young father he acts like a senior warrior and teams up with Scorchfur in the undemining of Shadowclan leadership. He is the second voice in deposing Rowanstar and takes a strong stance in favor of Darktail. He is portrayed as a very protective mate to Pinenose, who loves to see him, but is pretty dismissive to most of his kits, with the exception of Puddleshine, who he leverages their kinship to keep the medicine cat with the rest of Shadowclan and the Kin instead of leaving with Rowanstar. Spikefur remains with the kin until darktail is deposed and killed, and is reported to have left with the remnants of the kin. It is later revealed through Yarrowleaf and Sleekfur that the tom got sick and died because the remnants of the rogue group refused to gather herbs or care for him.
His head tufts are based on these cats, which may be explainable as cryptic chimeras, or as another unique genetic phenomena:
As I have been promising for years, the eye color chart is all cleaned up and ready to be shared! I'm totally ok with this being saved and passed around, that's why all my info is on it.
Basic image description is in alt, and a full transcript of all text in the image is under the cut.
This model has been in a process of expansion and tweaking for a very long time. Huge huge thanks to all the folks who contributed and hunted down photos, helped me name all the colors, and gave the final proofs!
Sparrow's Eye Color Chart 2025 Edition
Eye colors in cats are difficult to model because they vary to a significant extent on two axes. This is my best attempt at a general model of cat eye color based on observation and research into how eye color works across species.
Pigmentation refers to the amount of pigment in the colored layer of the iris. Higher pigmentation causes darker colors.
Refraction means the extent to which light is scattered in the structures of the iris. Higher refraction causes deeper blues or greens.
Eye colors are related to coat color, but not as closely as breed standards might have you believe! Most coat colors can have most eye colors outside of purebred lines selected to meet breed standard.
What Color Are My Cat's Eyes?
Color names are descriptive of the actual color of the cat's eyes - I chose them all to sound nice so that breeders can use them if desired. Note that breed standards have a much broader use of color names - "Amber", for example, may include much of the golden to orange range.
Colors are based on pictures of cats in full white light (such as midday sun fully illuminating the eye), and tweaked to look good on properly color-calibrated screens. Always determine eye colors based on how they look in full light.
Main Block
standard eye colors possible with most pelts
Every cat is assumed to have genes that specify some genetic eye color in the main block, but certain other alleles can depigment the eyes partially or completely, creating the lower block.
Pigmentation and Refraction are modeled here as dependent on multiple genes, which seems to best fit the wide spectrum of possibilities in cats. The actual number of genes is unknown and could be very many, but for simplicity they are shown here on a scale from 1-7.
In theory, the genetic eye colors of the offspring should tend to fall somewhere between the genetic eye colors of the parents. Then, any depigmentation factors are applied, which may result in an actual eye color somewhere below the genetic eye color.
Lower Block
occur with phenotypes which cause depigmentation of the iris.
Gray-blues: Fairly rare coloration. The cause of gray eyes in humans is not well understood, but one theory is that collagen or very small amounts of pigment in the eye alter the scattering of light.
Blues: Most common depigmented colors. Can be caused by white spotting/dominant white, colorpoint, and sometimes mocha. There are also multiple Dominant Blue-eye (DBE) mutations known which cause blue eyes as the main effect.
Albinistic: Caused by complete albinism, which also fully depigments the back layer of the iris meant to keep light from getting through. This allows the red color from the retinal blood vessels to bleed through, and also causes poor visual acuity.
Following is a list of all eye colors shown on the main diagram. Rows are pigmentation levels starting from the highest pigmentation, refraction increases from left to right.
Cats can exhibit a few different heterochromia types, most commonly a blue with a non-blue. The other most common cause for heterochromia appears to be localized hyperpigmentation, which can be caused by damage to the eye. It can also happen simply due to differing iris structure or unusual pigment migration within the iris.
It is also relatively common for the center of the eye to be a slightly different color, without being marked enough to constitute full heterochromia. My provisionary term for this is "dual-toned". The boundary between this and "true" central heterochromia is somewhat subjective.
For any form of heterochromia or dual-toned eyes, my recommendation for describing them is to note both colors with a slash. For dual-tones, I generally write the outer color before the center one.
Complete Heterochromia
Blue/non-blue is commonly caused by white spotting/dominant white, other combos are rare.
Sectoral Heterochromia
Blue/non-blue sometimes occurs with white spotting/dominant white. Can also be from hyperpigmentation.
Central Heterochromia
Can occur due to hyperpigmentation, uneven pigment distribution, or iris structure. More common in certain breeds.
Dual-toned Irises
Relatively small differences in central eye color are common in cats.
Iris Atrophy
Iris atrophy due to old age can cause a distinctive lighter ring in the center of the iris.
Literally got sidetracked from the TC family tree because I was like "oh dang I need people to know what these color names are". So here's the eye colors, please make use of them! :3
Everyone please check this project out, it looks really lovely and I and many people in my server helped to develop and test the genetics system. If you want a cat petsite that's a bit more grounded than the other options out there, this might be what you're looking for!
Looking for a new rename for Fuzzypelt for the Sprewrite because in Four Fates I changed his appearance. (Decided to divorce the Four Fates AU from the rest of the timeline for multiple reasons.)(Also I've warmed up significantly on it as a name but it doesn't suit that point in the timeline.)
I looked through my old name list. Was going to do Hollypelt knowing that was a cat that exists already. Forgot that Hollypelt in fact existed in ThunderClan at a similar time.
This is the ONE thing preventing me from posting the TC family tree.
I did another comb through my lists and went with Ivypelt! But this is no longer the one thing preventing me from posting because I decided to make some edits and add a couple more cats.
I just got past some big projects in my classes though so that'll be very soon!
Looking for a new rename for Fuzzypelt for the Sprewrite because in Four Fates I changed his appearance. (Decided to divorce the Four Fates AU from the rest of the timeline for multiple reasons.)(Also I've warmed up significantly on it as a name but it doesn't suit that point in the timeline.)
I looked through my old name list. Was going to do Hollypelt knowing that was a cat that exists already. Forgot that Hollypelt in fact existed in ThunderClan at a similar time.
This is the ONE thing preventing me from posting the TC family tree.
Around a week ago I sat and converted some of the Warrior Cats book covers into templates!
I wanted to redraw the original cover of "Into The Wild" for Warrior Cats 22nd birthday; and while I was making the template for myself I decided to just go ahead and make a lot more variants.
There's 19 templates total- you can read more info about them and individually download the templates over on my toyhouse!
hey would anyone be interested in some smallish commissions? i'm doing a big one rn but the back and forth is taking a while so i'm ending up with a lot of time and energy for other art. i don't need money super urgently but it would definitely help give me one less thing to stress about
i'd probably stick to icons or single characters with simple backgrounds, anything i can do mostly in one go.
i don't wanna put together a full sheet until i'm done with the project but i have plenty of recent examples i can show on request.
