#so a classic brown mackeral tabby

[tchaikovsgay]

Alright you said cat genetics, you're getting cat genetics. I will try to keep this interesting, but it is going to get technical at points.

I'm going to assume you know dominant and recessive gene terminology, chromosomes, Punnet squares and the like. I'm not going to take this far past high school biology.

First off, fur colors: there's two genes for this, black and orange. The black fur gene has 3 options: dominant B, which makes a pitch-black cat; recessive b, which is a chocolatey brown color, and even more recessive b', which has a light-brown cinnamon color (B>b>b' with complete dominance, so the higher-ranking ones completely cover the lower ones; a cat with Bb genes will be black, bb' would be chocolate brown, etc.) Chocolate brown and cinnamon coats are rare enough to usually only be seen in purebreds.

On top of that, there's the orange gene O, which is basically an on-off switch for whether the cat will be orange. If you have O you're orange, if you have o you're not orange. The orange gene COVERS the black gene. The trick is, this gene is on the X chromosome, so female cats have 2 copies while male cats only have one. So male cats can only be orange or not-orange, while females can be tortoiseshell if they get one copy of each gene: Oo. (orange genes are co-dominant, so the effects of them blend) This is why 99% of calico and tortoiseshell cats are female; to be genetically calico or tortoiseshell a male must have a mutation where they have XXY chromosomes.

And on top of THAT you have the white-fur gene, which is complete dominant W>Ws>w. White is just a lack of pigment in the hair, so the white-fur gene trumps all other fur colors by simply removing the pigment. A white cat could have literally anything else genetically under the white. W, the dominant gene, is a full-color white cat, often with blue eyes (which comes from losing pigment in the retinas). It also has a chance of making the cat deaf if the lack of pigment reaches the inner ear. Ws is a white-spotting gene; it causes part but not all of the cat to lose pigment, so this is how you get some-color-and-white cats. Funny enough, having two Ws genes (WsWs) as opposed to just one (Wsw) often leads to the cat having more white spotting, but it's a spectrum and not always reliable. w is the recessive and means no white spotting at all, so the orange and black genes show through.

What about gray cats? That's the dilute gene: D/d. Dilute basically fades out the color so black becomes gray, brown becomes light brown, orange becomes cream, etc. D is the dominant one and means no dilution: black stays black, orange stays orange. To get a gray/cream/whatever dilute cat, you have to have double recessive dd.

Now tabby markings. There are a few genes for this. To determine if the cat is tabby at all, you have the agouti gene: A/a. A is dominant and means yes tabby markings. aa is recessive and means no tabby, solid colors. EXCEPT for orange cats, because for some reason we don't yet understand, having the orange gene automatically turns on the pigment structure that causes tabby markings even WITHOUT the agouti gene! So an aa orange cat will still be tabby. (Tortoiseshell cats will have tabby markings on the orange parts only.) The theory is that there is a base tabby pattern encoded somewhere else in the cat's DNA and both the agouti and orange genes function to sort of amplify it so it's visible. In fact, if you look at a solid black or gray cat in the sun, you can sometimes see the tabby markings on the head or legs, colloquially referred to as ghost tabby markings.

Type of tabby markings is another gene: mackeral tabby (stripes) is dominant over classic tabby (cinnamon roll-style swirlies). There's also ticked tabby and spotted tabby, which are two entirely different genes that modify the first one to make very faint markings or spots respectively. Having fun yet?

Last thing I'll talk about is colorpoint, or the Siamese gene. It's actually a variation of albinism that ties color to heat, so cold areas of the body get darker. This is why Siamese cats have dark tails, paws, and ears, while their main body is light. There are actually a lot of different types of colorpoint, and it can change throughout a cat's life. Here's a diagram:

How do I know all this? I was obsessed with Warrior Cats as a kid, and anybody who's read those books know they are completely inaccurate to actual cat genetics. So I used to make my own little genetic trees with an online family tree maker to see what color the cats would come out if they actually followed real-life rules. The results were often way off from what the books said. I made a whole bunch of these trees with different starting cats, restrictions, and such (like whether or not purebred genes were allowed in wild cats) to see what would happen. I would do this for fun for hours as a kid, because there is nothing abnormal at all going on with my brain. Here's an example of what one looked like; you can see the genetic terms on the left.

That's it, holy crap that was long, if you actually read this far thank you so much. If for some reason you want more cat genetics, I recommend this: http://messybeast.com/catarchive.htm The site can be tough to navigate at times, but it has a lot of good information.

THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE INFODUMPS IVE EVER READ. thank you for taking the time to tell me about cat genetics 🥺👉👈 I'm fucking obsessed with the ghost tabby markings tidbit because my little grey ghost cat has faint tabby markings!!

they used to be almost invisible but shes 15 now and theyve lightened a lot with age

#prommy I'm gonna get around to infodumping in return #i am stressed and scatterbrained today but i will manage

[caliginousarchitect]

More cats based on @bonesetblues​‘s KHR/BNHA crossover fic “curiosity kills the cat (but satisfaction brings it back)” (first set, the 10th gen + Kyoko, here)

Varia time

Xanxus Did him as a longhair black candleflame/braided mackerel tabby, with medium rufousing (making him look very brown). Gave him a heavy build, and dark copper orange eyes. His scars that are always visible on his human form were done as patches with hair missing, while the ones that show up when he gets worked up we decided to show as patches with damaged melanin production, so they produce white hair. Also went with dark copper orange eyes.

Squalo Longhair blue silver ticked tabby, with some white spotting that’s pretty hard to see. I entertained myself by using the tabby marks and white spotting to give him shark gill patterning. His posing was an interesting question since, of course, the man lopped off his own hand and replaced it with a sworded prosthetic. Which obviously isn’t making the trip across to a different universe, and even if it had he wouldn’t be able to use it because, well. he’s a cat now. Also, how to get around being three-footed? I went with him plantigrade biped-ing, since it’d keep him from trying to walk on the stump better than tripod, which I can’t help but feel, walking on the stump by accident might be uncomfy? Like when you misjudge how many stairs there are in a staircase. He ended up looking kinda top-heavy because of the neck fur. Lightish blue eyes on him. Viper/ Mammon Longhair lilac smoke showing classic tabby ghost markings, and darkish blue eyes. Viper actually has slightly lighter hair colour than Chrome, so I was *wiggles hand* between an even more powder blue than Chrome or lilac, obviously ended up going lilac. Smoke because, eh, I thought the smoke/ mist thing was amusing, classic tabby ghost markings because I could make a reference to Fantasma’s snake form with the swirl. Eyes are a guess, we don’t actually Know Viper’s eye colour since they always have their hood up. Their... tattoos? are mirrored by the tabby markings under their eyes.

Belphegor Shorthair apricot ticked tabby with central-heterochromatic eyes (copper on outside edge of the eyes, pale blue around iris) although with the squint it’s very hard to see (deliberate). Another case where we don’t actually know the character’s eye colour (beyond Lussuria calling them beautiful) since he (and his brother) never show them. So I figured, something unique and noteworthy. Our colour options for the fur were Golden (black tabby with a corin mutation), red, cream, or... apricot, which is the Dilute Modifier version of Red+cream, between them, colour-wise. and also very hard to find reference photos of. Longhair didn’t seem right, so shorthair. He’s squinting because I figure he doesn’t want people looking at his eyes and he doesn’t have hair to cover them now?

Lussuria Longhair chocolate classic tabby with high rufousing and green-yellow eyes. (another character where I don’t think we ever really see the eyes? Sunglasses in this case). Shorthair might have been more accurate to go with, but comnsider... flamboyance. I couldn’t pass up a feather-boa tier of fluff on him. Unlike things like piercings and prosthetic hands, his dyed and bleached hair remains.

Levi-a-than Longhair black smoke with ghost mackerel tabby markings and low white spotting, and green eyes. Also he has mostly black whiskers, which is an unusual trait but can happen. White spotting used to outline where his facial hair is as a human. Smoke let us go with a solid, but also let the ghost markings of his hairline be tabby stripes, and also. pale poofy neck. Heterozygous on japanese bobtail, resulting in a half-tail with a kinked end, because I just. cannot envision him with a full tail? (Having had it indicated to us that white spotting on the face is pretty much 100% correlation with white toes, he has white toes, and also Lambo in the first post’s image is now updated.)

Fran Shorthair blue mackerel tabby with low rufousing, and teal green eyes. With admittedly a green hue. One could almost pretend the hue is down to the lighting in the room, perhaps, colours are like that. (Fran also seems like the kind of person who could end up with algae growing in his hair, like a sloth, because he doesn’t Care, so you could go with that option also)

other notes: the cats the author has used as a ‘this is what they might look like’ include - Squalo’s is actually a longhair black silver tabby, we went with blue instead for the paler colour. - the turkish angora used for Belphegor is actually a cameo red (that is, red silver), rather than cream (evident by how red the stripes are) - the cat used for Levi is, in fact, a black smoke like what we went with! although the one in the image is a shorthair. - the one used for Lussuria appears to be... chocolate or cinnamon silver tabby? Lighting in the image is kinda bad. Probably Cinnamon. Lussuria actually has brown hair that he bleaches+dyes, rather than like. Naturally AnimeColour hair, which is why we went with chocolate (with the hair on his head still dyed) Stay tuned for the Mists (Mukuro, Chrome, Viper, Fran) in Anime Colours (Post 3: Animecolour Mists) I have to decide who to do next, so options include: - Non-10th gen Namimori kids (sans Kyoko since I already did her, but including Shoichi) + Kokuyo squad (sans Mukuro+Chrome) - Arcobaleno (sans Viper) - Simon Family - Other?? I’d love other people’s votes

#cats #katekyo hitman reborn #khr #bonesetblues #character design #ficart #Fanfic art #digital art #our art #cktc(bsbib)