remember that military cat skin i made? How that black tabby looked brown?


CAT GENETICS WITH A STUDENT WHO HASNT BEEN TAUGHT ABOUT CATS YET AND LEARNED IT OFF MANY ONLINE SOURCES OUT OF CURIOSITY AFTER LEARNING HOW GENETICS WORK IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Intro: so there are 2 main cat colors: black and red. Theres a thing called the dilution gene, which lightens the color, but we can get to that later.



Tabbies: Add the tabby gene, which seems to be rather dominant, which we will get to later. Tabbies stripes are the main color, and the fur around the stripes is lighter than the stripes. Red/Ginger cats will always look like tabbies, but when bred with a solid black cat, a female kitten would be a solid tortoiseshell. This is called false tabby. A black tabby has black stripes and brown fur. Wait- shouldnt it be gray? well, the stripes aren’t perfectly brown, which gives the fur a brown tone instead.


Dilution: Now about that gray- a brown tabby with the dilution gene will look gray instead. But shouldnt it be a lighter brown? Well, not necessarily. Not only does dilution lighten the color, but also desaturates it.



Dominant and Recessive: Dominant genes can show in offspring as long as one parent has it, and is represented by a capital letter in charts. Recessive genes only show if both parents pass down the same version of a gene. Dilution is recessive, therefore requires two carriers to pass down the gene. This doesn't seem to work for humans though.

A Return To Dilution: The diluted colors of a cat are Blue-Gray and Cream, so my cat OC is a dilute ginger colorpoint. (Some markings are impossible on real cats, like the gray tabby star on a cat that isn’t tabby, and the two colored eye streaks on each side, but theres a thing called double dilute. Its when dilute cats get diluted again. The colors for this are Carmel and Apricot (apricot is actually a more saturated ginger and i don’t know how that works) and then there’s more standards to it.

Colors: There is a color chart to cats. So red and black are the main colors, but there are 3 different versions of black that look brown. So the order horizontally in the chart are Black, Chocolate, Cinnamon, and Red, but i am going to flip the chart sideways for convenience to typing.

THE CHART:



Pigment | Base | Dilute | Double Dilute

Black: Black, Blue-Gray, Blue-Based Carmel

Chocolate: Chocolate, Lilac/Lavender, Lilac-Based Carmel

Cinnamon: Cinnamon, Fawn, Fawn-Based Carmel

Red: Red, Cream, Apricot




Colorpoints: Colorpoints are cats whose base is their normal colors, but these colors only show at the ears, limbs, face, and tail. Thats it. Nothing else important to it.



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