This orange tabby cat’s entire underside, feet, and most of its tail appear white or whited. The white on this cat doesn’t look like a white spotting pattern and instead resembles a horse pattern known as pangaré or mealy. Most tabbies (whether brown/black, grey/blue, chocolate, lilac, cinnamon, fawn, orange/ginger, or cream/buff) don’t have that white or whited an underside or feet.
One reason I think that this cat appears to have a feline version of pangaré is because in white spotting, the delineation between the base color and the white areas is sharp whereas in pangaré, the delineation between the base color and the white or lighter areas is gradated or smooth. Another reason I think this cat appears pangaré instead of white spotted is that unless there is a little white tail tip, white spotting doesn’t cover any part of the tail except for Grade 9 patterns.
I’ve heard that many solid grey cats appear to have lighter muzzles and toes but what could explain this cat’s pattern and mostly white tail?
This mealy or pangaré appearance appears to be easier to achieve on a tabby than on a solid colored cat as solid colored cats, even dilute ones, don’t usually have lighter colored undersides whereas tabbies usually do. So, do you think that Spiderleg in the Warriors series would be more realistic patternwise if he were a tabby?
This otherwise short-haired cat also appears to have a medium-haired feathered tail. What could explain that trait?
Horse pattern descriptions do not work for cats. Some patterns can originate from the same or similar genes, but it is foolish to apply terminology from one species to another when you don’t know for sure the genetic origin.
Also, I don’t know where you heard that a white-spotted cat cannot have a white tail tip. While it’s true that a cat’s whole tail will typically not be white unless it has quite high-grade white spotting, just the tip being white is reasonably common at lower grades (it’s often seen with tuxedo patterns, for instance).
But to answer your question about this cat, though, you’re right, he does not look to have white spotting. He looks like a red silver tabby (sometimes called a “cameo tabby”). I have no idea whether the silver gene in cats is in any way similar to the mealy/pangaré gene in horses, but that’s largely irrelevant anyway.
Silver is associated with being a tabby (a solid cat with the silver gene will end up smoke instead), so you’re right that this is more common among tabbies, but silver patterns don’t suddenly make Spiderleg remotely possible, tabby or not. Silver causes the cat’s fur to be white with colored tips; this would not make a black cat with a brown belly any less impossible. Golden tabbies, where the fur is honey/pale apricot with colored tips, exist (and are VERY rare), but this would result in that cat looking golden-colored with black stripes (or spots or whatever), not with a cat being black with a brown belly.
