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how cats achieved world domination

catgenes

I’m taking a life drawing course on Wednesday nights again, making me late to home. So have a gander at this article on kitty genetics that I’ve had open in a tab for a while.

The gist of the chart is that the ‘blotchy’ tabby coat is a recent mutation — like, Medieval — but that 80% of cats carry the gene for it now.

Thing is, I think of the blotchy tabby coat as being a strictly British thing. All the tabbies I’ve known in the US have been the mackerel kind. You know, straight stripes.

Would you agree?

Comments


Comment from Ric Fan
Time: July 5, 2017, 10:57 pm

Agree? No. I’ve rarely seen striped cats and mostly “blotchy”

Cats achieved world domination bc they have a lot of sex and make a lot of kittens and find suckers who will wait on them hand and foot.


Comment from Crabby Old Bat
Time: July 6, 2017, 12:06 am

Agree? Nope. We’ve got a blotchy now, has a swirl that looks like a cinnamon bun. His litter-mate is a mackerel. We’ve had both blotchies and mackerels before. Most of the blotchies I’ve seen have been brown tabbies; greys and gingers tend to be mackerel, at least in my neighborhood.


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: July 6, 2017, 2:04 am

Well, isn’t this refreshing…!!??
Artistes….
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3cbb1553f4372198cd5755e1c26322733efd117fc06b5b2ef6ef68bbcf0e3cea.jpg?w=600&h=403


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: July 6, 2017, 2:14 am

Would it be a safe assumption to think that most American cats came from England and perhaps Germany? I suppose that there might have been some early Spanish cats in Florida, but the majority would have come with the Jamestown crowd, et al


Comment from AliceH
Time: July 6, 2017, 4:48 am

I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a striped tabby cat. All blotchy around these parts, but I’ll keep an eye out Calico count as blotchy, right?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 6, 2017, 7:38 am

Oh, I didn’t think of things like calico and black-and-whites as blotchy, AliceH. I assumed it was strictly about stripey tabbies.

British kitties have round, flat faces. Like British blues, but across all colors.

Most of the American cats I’ve known have long, Egyptian faces.


Comment from Wolfus Aurelius
Time: July 6, 2017, 12:56 pm

I don’t think so. My late Maine Coon mix Arizona was definitely the “classic” tabby: stripes on head, legs, and tail, and the rest looked like a reddish-orange marble cake in the middle. With neat dashes of white on chest, paws, and belly. On the other hand, the late Tatiana Romanova, a purebred Siberian, was a brown mackerel tabby, all stripes.


Comment from ExpressoBold
Time: July 6, 2017, 3:43 pm

Jes’ playin’, y’all…
~
http://ow.ly/LLDK30dp63B


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: July 6, 2017, 7:14 pm

so can we point out that Silvester didn’t come to the Americas prior to the English and Spanish? And that probably means no Celtic/Phoenician/Egyptian trading colonies prior to Mr. Columbus and his rude white male European entry into the ‘New World’?

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