#cat analysis

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Hello! What do you think of Beefport? Is she a chimera??? Ginger + tortoiseshell? She’s female.

Huh, you're right, that's very peculiar. Theoretically it's possible she's just a tortie with an unusual pattern, but in this specific case i think it's more like to be some kind of mosaicism. Chimera is not the only option (there are somatic cell line mutations, for example), but it's certainly possible (if the parents' colors allow both red and tortie daughters; so if her father is red and her mother is tortoiseshell).

[clovrfrost]

I have created a new video!

https://youtu.be/KwKNKD38Hi4

Who do *you* think is the saddest warrior?

The thumbnail:

All the drawings done by me in the video:

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Hi there! I've recently been on a quest to find the correct way to describe my sister's cat Azula. My best guess is that she seems to be a seal mink point with white spotting + dilute or double dilute red tabby (the faint red/cream tabby markings on her face, parts of her ears, and a few very faint cream patches on her body and paws). But I'm confused how the dilute red can with the much darker seal points, and I'm very new to cat coat genetics. If you could help, I'd be so grateful!!

Hello! I believe she's a black (aka seal) tortoiseshell point with white. (Not mink, siamese-type point.) She has the characteristic blue eyes, and points can easily get this dark.

The very pale red is also normal, colorpoint washes out the red pigment more efficiently than the black, so flame points are much paler than seals, and on torties the red patches can seem almost white. Strictly speaking it's not dilution, since the cat's genotype is still D_, nevertheless it's a lightening effect.

If you want to deep dive into cat genetics, the genotype for this color is: aa B_ cscs D_ Oo wsw.

[amber-tortoiseshell]

hi there! I am getting this beauty of a Siberian in a couple of weeks and I am curious if you think she is a lynx point tabby or lilac tabby? I understand that lilac is a color and lynx is a pattern but I guess I don't really understand what the default coloring of lynx point is. I love your blog!

This will maybe makes it easier to understand the terminology: lynx is just a fancy word for tabby. So a lynx point is a tabby point. The same way a tabby cat can be black or lilac, a lynx point can be black (seal) lynx or lilac lynx. (Black, the 'default' cat color, is often called "seal" in pointed cats.)

Consider the cats respectively in the top right corner: both are lynx points, but the first is a seal lynx, the second is a lilac lynx.

Now about your cat. Lilac isn't a standard color in siberians, so it's unlikely for her to be lilac, and anyway she has a black tailtip that reveals her base color is black. You're right about her being tabby, and i strongly suspect she's golden too on top of this, that's why she has yellow tones and a pink nose without any noticeable dark outline, very possibly specifically the siberian flavor of golden, sunshine (corin).

And i might be too daring, but considering the noticeably silver shades on her forehead, and the fact that this is a siberian, i think you got yourself a silver sunshine, aka a bimetal point. Which is insanely cool.

I haven't seen a lot of bimetal points but her colors remind me of the full colors bimetals very strongly.

Bimetal (sunshine silver tabby) from here. Your cat is pointed on top of this color.

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Helloo! My neighbors have these two gorgeous cats (they're very shy, it's a miracle that I got close enough to take these pictures, I guess they felt safe enough in their yard that I could snap these through the fence) I have never seen this coat color irl before and I would love to know what it is called and if you know more about it? Thanks!

Wuh, i think that's lilac again. They look very solid, almost no tabbying, and the longhair's nose doesn't look like that of a cream. If you look at this lilac-cream tortie, the lilac parts are closer to these cats' colors than the creams for me.

Lilac is the dilution of chocolate, both of these are very rare in the general cat population (more common in certain breeds, british for example).

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Came across this very lovely and friendly boy on my morning walk. Am I correct in thinking chocolate point?

Might be chocolate. I'm a little hesitant saying it's not black, especially as the paw pads seem dark, but i don't see them very well, so i can be mistaken about that. This extensive patterning is also more likely with a black point, but i don't think it's impossible with chocolate either, i've just never seen it.

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Do you know what might be going on with the two (i think they are different? But honestly cant tell) cats at the beginning of this vid:

https://www.tumblr.com/catasters/806378046884069376?source=share

Usually spotted tabbys have lots of little spots, but these look so large and blotchy, almost like the rosettes on bengals, but since these are street cats I doubt that...

Just a weird blotched tabby?

Screen shots for convenience

Post by @catasters · 1 video

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Hm, those spots really do resemble to rosettes, althought they seem to be single colored, lacking that lighter, "empty" middle (non-charcoal) bengal rosettes of this size have:

But this is something the bengal breeders explicitely want, so it might not be a trait that's actually inseperatable from rosettes.

Yeah no, sorry, I don't know either. Maybe weird rosettes, maybe weird blotches. Or somewhere between the two.

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Hello! There’s this cat I’ve seen a couple times in my neighbourhood who has really beautiful markings and I’ve never seen anything like them before!! I’ve followed this blog for a while so I was wondering if you would know how to describe/explain them :) Hopefully these pictures are good enough for you to go off of

Oh, this is so cool. Black tortoiseshell silver blotched tabby. Beautiful pattern, beautiful cat