#black tortoiseshell van

[amber-tortoiseshell]

get tortied

*unconvincingly* oh nooo...

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Hi, I'd like to enter one of my cats into your tournament! Her name's Sushi, she's 13 now. I always thought she had rather unique markings, especially the black splotch on her back.

She straight up looks like a cartoon cat

[amber-tortoiseshell]

https://www.reddit.com/r/CatGenetics/s/Re0eBycIi6

Saw a calico cat with freckles on Reddit and I wanted to share

link

Super cute little speckles!

[amber-tortoiseshell]

I want to submit the DIVA herself

(Still don't know her name, so I just call her DIVA because look at the face, she's serving to no one! I kinda know the people who own her now, but not on a personal level)

And her mom

(She injured her paw :< and yeah, she's calico :3)

.

And this one! I also know who owns her. But I forgot her name

T_T

But I know she has a brother

(Had to mention him, he's a sweetheart)

Hell yeah, love tortie vans!

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Is it possible for a cat to be Genetically a calico but Visually only orange and white? (like all the black is covered by white spotting)

Well, yeah, but white spotting works kind of the opposite way: colored patches aren't covered by white, they "grow onto it", in a way. Mostly white cats are mostly white because they have less pigment producing cells (melanocytes), so most of the body remains uncovered by color.

So it wouldn't be like 'there are some black areas but you don't see them because the white spotting covers them up', it would be 'there are only a few melanocyte clone groups (-> colored patches) and they are all have an orange active X by chance'.

But of course this is only a technicality. The point is that that as far as I know, the kind of cryptid tortie you're describing is theoretically possible. I would expect it to happen extremely rarely and in very high white cats (vans), but i don't see why it couldn't happen.

The picture is just an illustration: tortie van bobtail. This one has melanocytes with both colors.