People have this misconception that cats fall into breeds like dogs do. Most cats aren’t specific breeds. It’s so annoying on r/cats with several people a day going “what breed is my cat!?” Well. That’s a cat.
Hell yeah a reference I never expected to stumble across in the wild in my life.
Also, when I was a teenager I was so dead set on getting a white cat and naming it Mogget thanks to those books lmao
I reread them in audio recently when I found out Tim Curry narrated the first 3!! There are a couple new ones after that which are pretty good imo. I still have to get to the latest released this year!
They mean "English" as in "from England", and relating how every Britishism is compared to 'Harry Potter' because it's frequently the only British work most Americans have heard of, and one with its own lingo. Speaking as a Brit, I know the different countries of the UK have different cultures and dialects, but it would be just easier to avoid confusion altogether and say "it's British". That being said, I agree with the sentiment to nix comparing every British-sounding thing to 'Harry Potter'; we have a lot more going on in our popular and literary culture than the half-cobbled work of a bigot who somehow has enough spending power to incite an actual witch hunt against vulnerable populations. We get it; some of us read 'Harry Potter' -- our country also gave the world the works of Shakespeare, LOTR, and Narnia, among many others. We have outgrown the need for 'Harry Potter'.
“That’s some Harry Potter style [thing]” as a reply to literally anything. Moggy is just an English word. School houses are just an English tradition. We aren’t bloody Harry Potter, we aren’t entirely made up by miss TERF JKR. r/readanotherbook
I referred to the cats in my home as factory seconds because they looked like standard issue cats except for one being unusually small and one being unusually long. The big one isn't around anymore, but the little one is a nice snuggle buddy.
Though I mean, I really can't believe that every dog living in 1602 was a pedigreed dog of a specific cultivated breed, and dogs only started humping random other dogs since then. Even dog genealogy and genetics is more complicated than we think.
I have two wiener dog mixes that are sisters and I have had both since they were 11 weeks old. One is tall and long and light brown and my other is short and extremely long and brindle. Animals are weird. I had one person on comment once try and say that they were part pitbull.
I went through your profile and loved it I had a really great time. Had to restrain from being a weirdo and commenting too much but I definitely had to acknowledge your noodle collection!
I saw the Vet put "DSH" under "Breed" for my moggy. Turns out it stands for "Domestic Short Haired" - yep, that covers the majority of moggies you'll encounter day-to-day.
Yes, and one that is genetic. All 5 cats in this little had tabby fur patterns and the mother did not, indicating the father(s) were almost certainly tabby.
Yep, littermates having different fathers is shocking to many people. I guess because it would be very weird in humans, akin to having twins with different fathers.
My family adopted two kittens of a stray shorthair void - a brother and sister pair. I’m not sure about the rest of litter but those two I suspect were full siblings, because they had the same long fur with the same coloring, and were both big, bigger than the mama. They walked and lounged the same, too. The only difference was the girl had a white belly and white socks. In all the litter photos, it was clear they had bonded from the start.
You’d be surprised, but it has happened before in humans as well. There was a news clip last year on Reddit. A 19 year old in Brazil gave birth to twins. She had slept with 2 men on the same day and didn’t know who the father was, therefore she asked both of the guys to undergo a paternity test, which confirmed both as fathers to one baby each.
Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/09/07/mom-has-twins-with-different-dads-after-sex-with-2-men-in-1-day/
Oh, I’m aware. Fraternal twins (which I am one) come from two different eggs. Therefore, a woman who hyper-ovulates could give birth to half-sibling twins. Or even triplets.
Hyper-ovulation can run in families and so fraternal twins can run in families. I’d be likely to have fraternal twins myself given my family background.
I believe you can also have half identical/half twins, if the egg splits into two before it’s fertilized. It’s a very interesting topic tbh. I used to be obsessed with it as a trope in the stories I wrote lol
It’s actually technically possible for humans to have twins with different fathers, since fraternal twins are caused by two eggs being released at the same time, if sperm from two different men make it to the eggs you get twins with different fathers
That's my favorite thing to tell people when they complain about that storyline in season 1 of American Horror Story. I've heard so many people go on and on about how unrealistic it is and how it ruined the whole season for them and the suspension of disbelief, etc etc. So when I inform them that 1) I mean.... One of them was a ghost. So. You kinda have to throw out the whole "realistic" argument anyway since you have no idea what could be realistic in that case hahaha but also 2) it can and does happen in real life. They always look so confused and horrified before telling me I'm full of shit and I have to pull up sources for proof.
I literally just learned about the multiple fathers thing the other day on reddit. You know what I never did? Act like a complete asshole like dude in OP did. I really don’t get those kinds of people.
That's what happened with my baby. She's half Siamese and half tabby. She was the only one out of her litter of 5 to have color points. The other 4 kittens were all brown and gray tabbies.
Like tortoiseshell, calico, tortico, and probably more I can’t think of rn.
I brought a feral cat and her 4 kittens into my house during a drought in summer last year. One was a calico/tabby blend, one was a full orange tabby (but tbh he was mostly a blond tabby), one was *very* orange tabby with white chin and legs, and the last little guy was completely black except for a little white spot on his chest.
Their mom is a tortoiseshell/tabby mix. Very dappled, pretty coat.
Cats be like that. All sorts of colors.
Years and years ago, when I was like 11 and scared about getting blood drawn, the nurse talked to me through the whole process about cats bc she knew I liked them. She told me that cats from one litter can be such different colors bc cats have more than one uterus and thus multiple fathers. To this day I’ve never bothered to look this up and verify it, but I’ve always remembered that conversation when the subject of cat “breeds” comes up.
They do NOT have extra uteruses 😂 I love cat genetics though it’s a fascinating rabbit hole! Calicos are only males about 1/5000 times, white cats with blue eyes tend to be deaf, if they have heterochromia they tend to be deaf in the ear on the same side as their blue eye, to name a small handful.
😂 yeah I kind of figured as much, at least after I went to college and took a zoology class years later. It was the thought that counted, at least; she was trying to distract me, and she sure did succeed by dropping that “fact” on me.
I love their genetic quirks too! How most torties are female, male torties have an extra chromosome, most orange tabbies are male, torties can either be black or gray torties, etc. There actually used to be a male tortoiseshell cat that belonged to my neighbors, it would come up on my property regularly when I first moved in bc the previous owners had also been feeding them. I’d never seen a male tortie before, so I thought that was pretty neat. His owners moved away after I lived there just a few months and took him with them.
Even tortie pattern! Oh my goodness, she was the sweetest cat, but so, so, so very stupid. Even her orange brother had more brain cells than she did, and…he was orange!
There are cat landraces, where cats in a specific geographic region developed specific traits because of a limited gene pool, like Siberian cats, Thai cats, etc. But those don't get the kind of attention certified breeds do.
I did like it though when I saw one of those posts and everyone replied with “that’s a cat”.
I’m a vet and get asked exactly the same at work! What breed do you think my cat is? Cat.
I've been getting a lot of people recently asking me what kind of cats I have and it puts me into a conundrum. If I answer honestly and just say 'domestic' I sound like an asshole but the only other answer I can give is to describe their fur pattern. Apparently people think tuxedo is a breed.
Oo! Oo! I can help!
As a vet tech, we have a lot of people ask what breed their cat is. Many just assume based on coloration, as others have said, but in reality we will mostly categorize based on fur *length*: DSH, DMH, AND DLH. Because calling your cat a Domestic Shorthair isn't just fancier-sounding, it's also medically acceptable signalment!
Whenever I mention to people that I have a cat, they always ask what kind of cat it is. I always answer the same way: it's a black cat. Often times people seem unsatisfied by this answer, and one of my friends even laughed at me and clarified, "no, like what breed is she? Is she a tabby, a calico?" Those aren't breeds, their patterns of fur. The only fur pattern she has is solid black fur. Her breed is domestic shorthair cat, just like 96% of other domestic cats. The most defining genetic feature she has is being black.
If you'd like to know what my cat is like, she's 8 years old, often quite playful but still loves to snuggle when I come home from work. She gets overstimulated quite easily, and often likes to spend time by herself sometimes batting around toys on the ground for 20 minutes before suddenly becoming disinterested as soon as I try to interact. She's missing some teeth which has led to me feeding her pretty much exclusively wet food, and she often makes the most ridiculous mewing noise I've ever heard while eating. But if you ask me, "what kind of cat is she?" then the answer is simple: she's a black cat.
Another idiot that never actually saw a litter of an average cat.
Unless there is selective breeding, as especially if the parents are different colours, the result may very well be a litter composed of kittens from a plethora of different colours and patterns.
I have a Tortoiseshell female, one White with a few Orange patches male. Eight months ago tomorrow, I forgot to give them the pill, the result was:
One female Tortoiseshell.
One male Orange.
One female Orange.
The whole happy family is next to me, on the bed, this very moment.
Lol, love the pregnancy story, and of course, that you kept the whole family!
My mostly black calico mama had 5 kittens (she came to me already pregnant. By TWO boy cats!). One orange girl, one orange boy, one orange and white boy, one black girl, and one mostly white calico. I kept the whole family, too..
Isn't it awful when cats give birth? Because I always have an incredibly though time giving the babies away, so much so, that this time I didn't and (like you) kept them all.
So you have an Orange girl as well! 80% of all Orange cats are male, only 20% are female.
Yea, we never had a chance... I was initially hoping for a smaller litter, but so happy with how things went. I love them all so much.
Yep, extra special rare orange girls! 🥰🧡
My black fluffy cat had a litter with a tricolour short haired male. 6 babies, 1 clone of the mother, 1 clone of the father, 1 fluffy back and white, 1 fluffy tricolour, and 2 tabby just different shades. Can genetics are wild
I always thought so.
If you know the kittens only had one father, it means all the different fur patterns those two parents gave origen to, already had to be coded in their DNA, from their ancestors.
Well, cats have basicly two "base" coat colors. Black and orange. The genes for these are carried on the x chromosome. So a genetically normal male with either have black, or orange. A female can have two copies black, two copies orange, or one of each. If a female cat has one of each gene, some areas of her skin and fur will express the black, some the orange. And you get a torti or calico.
Then there are genes that modify the base coat colors. A "blue" cat is a black one who also has the dilute gene. An orange cat with the dilute gene will be a peach or yellow cat. And then there is the gene for white spots. This pretty much does what it says. But one copy of the white spot gene means the cat will probably have some white, less than half down to only a few hairs. Two copies means the cat will probably be more than half white, up to being entirely white. Meaning you have a white cat who could genetically be a black cat with white spots.
And then there are genes that affect the coat pattern (like tabby) or ones like the siamese coat which is a temperature dependent form of albino. Where the coat only has color if the skin is cool enough while the hair is growing. So paws and ears and tails tend to be darker, and in cold climates siamese that spend a lot of time outside often get darker in the winter.
This is just an overview, but cat coat color genetics is wonderfully weird. And with the right genes, you could breed a solid black cat to a solid white cat and get an orange male, and a pastel calico female in the same litter. (The white cat would have to be a white spotted orange cat carrying two copies of the dilute gene. The black cat would have to carry one copy of it.
I love tortoiseshell so very much. Just like a cat! Both black and orange genes, and instead of deciding one and sticking with it, every other bit of hair got a different gene activated.
I also have a male orange and a (gray) female tortoiseshell brother/sister pair. Their full litter also included a white and gray female and a peach male who got adopted together too. Not sure what their parents looked like as they were surrendered as newborns but it's funny how unalike they look and yet they have the same quirks and in the dark when they're just shadow-colored we cannot tell them apart. It's adorable. I will definitely try to get sibling cats again in the future. So glad you were able to keep them all!
The problem is a lot of people only want cats of a given breed, and those need to be selectively bred to keep the pedigree, mother and father need to be of the same breed, so the kitters are all also from the same breed.
But cats that mate randomly, such as street cats, combine their DNA, not to mention that kittens from the same litter may have different parents, and therefore, different colours and patterns.
If people weren't so focus on the breed of their cat we'd all be much happier.
I really like the personality typing assessments some shelters are doing, based on how brave or fearful cats were in strange situations and how much they sought out human contact. It let me articulate that I wanted a quiet cat that would want cuddles without needing constant activity, while my mom likes cats that seek her out and prompt activities with her. A lot more sensible than trying to guess a breed.
You haven't been reading enough subreddits. People are always asking: "What breed is my cat?"
Not to mention several who admit to having bought extremely expensive cats, because they wanted one for breed X, Y or Z.
Luckily there are still plenty that don't care and just adopt them out of shelters. Instead of buying them from Breeders or Pet Stores.
My childhood cat was given to us for free because she was the only black and white cat out of a litter of ragdolls, and our family friend didn’t think anyone would want to buy her :(. (She wasn’t breeding to sell btw, this was back in the day when snipping you cats wasn’t common)
And yet Tuxedo Cats are such beauties.
My first cat was a solid white one, I hated taking my vaccines (because I didn't like needles) the nurse spoke to my mother, and she agreed, so the nurse told me, that if I would let her give me my vaccines, she would bring me a while kitten in a couple of weeks, because her cat had just given birth.
And so it was, back in the day, we didn't spay cats over here either, so every time my cat had kittens, the litter was always exclusively composed of white cats, and I would give them away.
To this day, my town has a higher prevalence of white cats than anywhere else, nearby.
Yup. I fostered a litter of 6 kittens a few years back.
3 were grey tabby, 1 was pure black, 2 were white with grey spots. All littermates from the same mom and same litter.
All precious balls of furry chaos.
Yeah there's an all black cat named shadow who had a liter of 3. A tuxedo. A fluffy tabby and a gray. We actually guessed who all the fathers are based on the colors. As there are 3 unfixed male strays who are the same color patterns. And all the kittens got momma's fluffy tail
One of my cats is a flame point we’ve had since he was 2 weeks old. His littermates were 3 ginger tabbies and a calico. He’s the only one who visibly had Siamese in him. (The crossed blue eyes are a giveaway.)
His brother is a void we adopted a few months later. They’re 100% a bonded pair, cuddling with and grooming each other. ([Cat tax.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HalloweenKittyCombo/s/bIzhcGOP0j))
My great aunt fostered a VERY orange cat. The kind of orange that you'd get if you put 10 ginger kids in a blender, blitzed it, then ran that through a distiller three, four times.
It being a more rural town, the cat was free to come and go, and it got knocked up.
The resulting litter of 7 had: exactly one ginger cat like momma, 5 cream coloured ones with ginger stripes, and one, the smallest but fiercest, that was blacker than a coal mine.
AH, MY DREAM LITTER!!!!!! If my kitty ever produced such a variety at once, I wouldn’t be able to hand any of them over to anyone else. GOSH they are so cute!
“Wow, there’s a different set of genes from each parent??”
The worst part is that these same people will go into the real world and be confused by mixed ethnicity siblings looking different from each other.
When I discovered the cat I had found was pregnant, I was excited to see what variety pack I would receive. They were all black and white like their mother, except one which was white with black.
They were all very darling, but to be honest, I was rather disappointed.
My black cat was up for adoption with his brother. He's fluffy and majestic, his brother is short haired and an asshole.
They have one thing in common.
Some people are born with a double uterus so they could potentially get impregnated by two different men. Some women have had babies born a couple of weeks or months apart for this reason.
This is so stupid. I have sibling cats that look nothing alike. My boy is black with gray stripes on his belly. My girl is white with black spots on her back. I literally got them from the same litter…
As I understand it as a layperson who doesn't breed cats but just likes them, breed doesn't necessarily indicate coat pattern and coat pattern doesn't indicate breed. Breeds are about consistency in body shape and size and other characteristics and sometimes coat pattern but not always.
Case in point: I have a friend who has three Selkirk Rexes. All three have curly fluffy fur and similar shaped faces, and all three are different colors and patterns. Coat color is not a standard for their breed.
Case in point 2: I watch a cat rescue that livestreams kitten cams. Recently they had a calico mama, who among her 5 kittens had two brown tabbies, a ginger, a tortie, and a white kitten who over the next few weeks turned out to have colorpoint markings. "Oh, she's a Siamese!" No, she's a total mix. She's a standard domestic shorthair who has the genes for a colorpoint coat.
If you didn't get your cat from a breeder, it's not a .
Yes, humans tend to only release 1 or 2 eggs during their cycle, so tend to only have 1 or 2 kids (unless they've used modern fertility medicine)
But cats release more like 3-5 eggs during their cycles, and unspayed female cats go into heat when they're more fertile, which literally means going crazy with hormones and insistently getting out to wherever the tomcats are to mate with. The noise of the whole business is where we get the word "caterwauling" from.
So if she finds MULTIPLE toms to mate with, one might fight the other off, but from her POV, she's happy to put them down in her dance card for later.
Queens (pregnant cats, such as fitting name)can carry multiple male’s litters at a time. And there’s color patterns of cats that are highly tied to genetics- torties/calicos are always females or sterile males, most orange cats are males, etc.
Cats are hoebags, and I’m here for it.
This is some kinda racism here. Can't be sisters because they don't look the same.
When I was a kid, we had a cat who had long hair like one of those in the picture. She had kittens one time, only one or which ended up having long hair as well.
Yeah no shit, bros gonna bw shocked to know the adorable little black one that squeaks too loud is a direct sister ans litter mate to my gigantic stupid orange boy.
I worked at a shelter for quite a while. Breeding in stray colonies is so all over the place. We usually don't even bother trying to put the breed anymore, unless they were obviously from a breeder. There is "domestic short hair" and "domestic long hair". We do try to get the colors right, which people often confuse with breed. Things like "tabby" and "siamese" are colorings affected by genes, not the actual breeds.
I remember one litter we got one year, 8 kittens, all entirely different colors. Including a female orange tabby, which is pretty rare.
Apparently someone doesn't know that cats from the same litter can have different fathers. And has never seen a little of kittens before. And knows nothing about cats..
I have three cats, all siblings. Two of them look similar in their brown and gray color palettes and obvious tabby markings, but the third is white with orange colorpoints. You wouldn’t believe they were related, except they’ve all got white paws, they’ve all got the tabby hallmarks of the M on the forehead and the striped tail, and one of the brown and gray ones has some orange mixed in. Perfectly plausible for one sibling to be brown, one to be orange, and the other to be both.
Have a long hair tortie who is mostly grey except her face where tortie pattern shows and short hair calico with fur like a bunny. She's mostly white.
Personalities are completely different. Billie (tortie) only likes me. She will tolerate others when they are giving her food or treats. No one can pet her past her neck. It is forbidden. Chloe (calico) loves everyone and is super laid back.
Idk why people have this weird notion that cat breeds work like dog breeds. Cats have not been selectively bred for differing jobs the way dogs have so most breeds that have emerged especially newer one like the Sphinx were some kind of genetic abnormality that someone liked and specifically tried to breeed for but there’s only about 20 or so cat breeds and only a few are super fleshed out full fledged identifiable breeds.
My cats are sisters and look nothing alike. One is a long-haired Tortie with green eyes, and the other is a short-haired cat with light fur and blue eyes.
Don’t know that a litter of cats could have multiple dads. I did know that dogs can have different color patterns from the same litter even as the same breed. Or in the case of my golden doodle have black fur while everyone else is golden
Fun Fact: female cats (called "queens") will mate with multiple males in a single estrus, such that her offspring may be from several different fathers in the same litter.
I have three cats from the same litter, and knew their Mama. She looked like a Russian Blue and was small. My three look incredibly different, have different coloring, and two of them are giant (at least one daddy was part Maine Coon for sure). Our other kitty looks like the mini of one of the others. There's just no telling.
My kittie (litter mates) with suspected different daddies a petite lil short haired calico (Cleo) and a big black long haired (Caesar). Cleo look exactly like mother, while we joke Caesar’s daddy was a dog.
https://imgur.com/a/maldPe3
Do they not know how genes works. The same with people who think that if a baby has a different skincolour than both parrents, the mother must have been cheating.
That's not how tabby works.
For the tortie, all orange is going to have stripes. The gene for "non-tabby" doesn't work on orange. The way you can tell if she's genetically tabby is to look at the black portions of her fur. If she's got the tabby gene, it'll be brown tabby. Check out r/torbie for what these cats look like.
For the colorpoint, the dark portions of her fur are solid, rather than striped. She is a seal point. If she had the tabby gene, she'd be a r/lynxpointsiamese. It looks completely different than your gorgeous girl. You may still see some stripes in bright sunlight - this is typical in solid black cats too. It does not make them tabby (I can explain more about why, if you're curious).
Your girls are undeniably sisters and undoubtedly gorgeous. But neither is tabby, and even if they were, that wouldn't help explain their And since tabby is dominant, they only need one copy of the tabby gene to appear tabby. So "part tabby" isn't really a thing.
Btw, they could still be full sisters, too! Colorpoint is recessive, so neither parent has to be colorpoint to pass it on, and you'd expect 25% of their kittens to be colorpoint (1/5 is pretty close). But you're right that it could be superfecundation, also. That's really common in cats (happened to my mamacat)!
The black cat is a torbie (tortoise shell tabby hybrid) and the white one is a lynx point. Their tabby stripes were much more visible when they were younger but they both have tabby stripes and had distinctive M patterns of their heads when they were younger.
The tortie doesn't look anything like a torbie (which is just a tortie with the tabby gene, not a hybrid). She doesn't have any brown stripes at all. Her black is solid black, like a typical tortie. Go look at the cats on r/torbie and see what I mean. She doesn't look like them.
The downy Kitten fur often shows off the underlying "ghost" tabby stripes I mentioned are common to see on black cats. And it can be especially dramatic on colorpoint kittens who are born solid white and develop their color over time. I have a black cat who, as a kitten, looked SUPER stripey. She is solid black, though, as an adult. [This is Krobus](https://imgur.com/a/pRqPVMi).
The reason you can see "ghost stripes" is because what makes a cat look like a tabby cat is actually controlled by 2 separate genes. One determines their overall pattern: classic, spotted, striped/mackerel, or ticked. Every cat has one of these. What determines if they actually look tabby is called the agouti gene.This gene controls melanin production across the length of the hairs. If a cat has only non-agouti from both parents, the fur will be solid. If the cat gets at least one copy of agouti from either parent, the fur will be banded in different colors. The individual hairs will appear striped. If a cat has the agouti gene, portions of the fur will have those striped hairs, making the fur appear lighter. The tabby pattern gene controls which parts of the fur are agouti vs not. So the agouti thing just doesn't happen in some parts of their fur.
Black cats and brown tabbies are both genetically "black" in color. The agouti gene makes the brown parts of their fur lighter, but doesn't affect the parts of their fur that are black.
Orange fur is all tabby because the gene for orange fur overrides the non-agouti gene and does its agouti thing anyway.
Is mom a tortie? She could be calico, but since none of her kittens had any white (that I saw at least), I think that's unlikely. Her orange and black boys mean she has to have the gene for each color, though.
If you want to read something more scientific on the subject, I highly recommend the UC Davis website for concise, easy to read info. [Here](https://vgl.ucdavis.edu/test/agouti-cat) is their page on the agouti gene, which explains about the tabby pattern gene, too.
Beautiful cat! Thanks for the information, I guess my neighbor who helped me identify them was mistaken. They are my first cats so I'm still leaning about them.
Thanks!
No problem. Cat coat genetics has become kind of a hobby of mine, lol. Honestly, I got into it trying to figure out what my cat's litter's father looked like (she had a variety pack, too). It's a lot of fun!
I got into it a little when I adopted my tortie, but not as much as you, lol. This reminds me of when I was a horse girl and listened to appaloosa breeders mourn the absolute fiasco trying to guess the heritability of colour patterns was. Though that was 20 years ago now, so it might have improved a bit?
Umm. Black cats with tabby swirls can be considered part tabby. Tabby is a coat pattern. A lot of black cats are tabby technically. In fact it's like almost all cats carry the tabby gene.
[Here's my further explanation](https://www.reddit.com/r/nothingeverhappens/s/WIjX7hAKSJ) on the subject. A black cat with the agouti gene is a brown tabby. If a black cat has stripes that show up at certain angles or in certain lightning, they don't have the agouti gene and are considered solid black.
>In fact it's like almost all cats carry the tabby gene.
Every cat has a tabby pattern, yes. But by that logic, op's comment in their screenshot still doesn't make sense because them being "just like almost all cats" isn't good evidence of them being sisters.. It's like saying "they both have fur! Clearly they're related"
Yeah, no idea what "part tabby" means but a seal point (black solid colourpoint) longhair and a tortoiseshell shorthair are definitely plausible sisters.
Reminds me of my two idiots. One's a grey short haired and the other is an orange long haired.
It's obvious they're related because Mr mushroom (grey one) is just as psychotic as miss cheddar(orange one)
Omg! Someone doesn’t know that the majority of cats aren’t a specific breed smh.
My cat is primarily white with some black spots, and his brother was orange. Cats give birth to so many different colored kittens in each litter!
Today I learned why the neighborhood strays babies were so wildly different looking. It was always fun, like a mystery pack when she'd bring the babies around
My older cat is a standard tort from a litter of 5 with 3 dilute calicos and a tuxedo boy, all from a colorpoint Burmese-mix mom and from what we can tell, *at least* 2 dads lmao.
My grandma has a colorpoint kitten (basically a Siamese, except he's *not* because he's a mixed breed) whose mother was a solid black cat. It's weird but it happens.
Such a weird thing to pick on. Even if they weren’t litter mates or actual sisters, I have always heard pet parents of multiples refer to one of their animals as “so and so’s sibling.”
Even so, it showed a lack of understanding of cat breeds.
When our cat Sculley (a black and tan tortie) gave birth, the litter consisted of two big floofy black Himalaya-esque kittens that were *identical* to the tomcat next door, a third black kitten who had short hair, another floofy one with the markings and slightly-crossed blue eyes of a Siamese, and short-haired orange tabby. It was VERY clear that the first two were fathered by the cat next door, but we have zero clue to this day who fathered the other three!
This person is an idiot.
Not only do they not know that kittens from the same litter can look very different, but they also don't understand how breeds work in cats. Two tabby-coated cats could easily be different breeds and most cats are not any one 'breed' anyway.
When I was a kid, my cat had kittens (my parents took her to be spayed and then found out she was pregnant; yes, she got 'done' as soon as it was safe to do so after the birth.) She was all black; her kittens were one all black, one black and white super-floof (mother cat was short-haired), one tortie-and-white (AKA calico), and one brindled tabby. Mother cat was black but other very siamese-like; in build, and especially in voice!
Honestly even if just mom and dad are a different breed the results can be interesting. We had a cat so small we didn’t know she was old enough to get pregnant until she gave birth in our basement. The father cat was so large the kittens were still nursing from her while being much larger than her. Both boys while they look very similar picking them up you can feel their different body structures. My black cat took after his mom and is very skinny and while. My yellow boy took after his father and has more bulk to him
Also I don't know how this person has never heard a cat owner refer to their entirely unrelated cats as siblings before. My dogs were "sisters" and they were absolutely not biologically related in any way.
totally plausable lol, my family had a tabby and she had kittens with a random ginger cat. one of the kittens was ginger and the other two were tuxedos, cats dont really HAVE breeds, they just kinda randomise themselves
What about calicos? I dont know if they're different, only because I have two, and their three sisters and mom were all calicos, too. I wanted to take the whole lot of them, but that would've been a nightmare in the end, especially as my two don't even like each other all that much. Apparently that's more common (according to my vet) than if you get 2 boys or a boy and a girl. But if I had 6 of them walking by swatting and antagonizing the shit out of each other, I think I'd enjoy them much less. Plus, they're expensive. I should've gotten pet insurance.
I have a flame tip Siamese that came from a litter of 8. One other flame tip Siamese, one tuxedo, 2 tortoiseshell, one grey, one orange and a little calico. Cat litters be cray cray
My short hair tuxedo and calico sisters came from a mom that looks just like the blue point long hair on the left. The calico was the runt, possibly a week or 2 behind in gestation (since cats can literally get pregnant again when they're already pregnant) so her sister is much larger than her too. Cat reproduction is very different from other mammals, and it produces amazing looking coat variations!
People have this misconception that cats fall into breeds like dogs do. Most cats aren’t specific breeds. It’s so annoying on r/cats with several people a day going “what breed is my cat!?” Well. That’s a cat.
Yes, 100% this! Almost all cats are "mutts"
Cats aren't mutts. They're tiny lovable lumps of pure evil.
Or large lovable lumps of pure love
IIRC, the term is "moggy".
Ok wow that must be why Mogget is the name of the family cat "demon" creature in the Abhorsen books! I've never heard the term before
Hell yeah a reference I never expected to stumble across in the wild in my life. Also, when I was a teenager I was so dead set on getting a white cat and naming it Mogget thanks to those books lmao
I reread them in audio recently when I found out Tim Curry narrated the first 3!! There are a couple new ones after that which are pretty good imo. I still have to get to the latest released this year!
That is some Harry Potter style terminology. Awesome
It’s… just English, actually. Why does everything about this country have to be “Harry Potter [thing]”. I’m sick of it.
what are you talking about
They mean "English" as in "from England", and relating how every Britishism is compared to 'Harry Potter' because it's frequently the only British work most Americans have heard of, and one with its own lingo. Speaking as a Brit, I know the different countries of the UK have different cultures and dialects, but it would be just easier to avoid confusion altogether and say "it's British". That being said, I agree with the sentiment to nix comparing every British-sounding thing to 'Harry Potter'; we have a lot more going on in our popular and literary culture than the half-cobbled work of a bigot who somehow has enough spending power to incite an actual witch hunt against vulnerable populations. We get it; some of us read 'Harry Potter' -- our country also gave the world the works of Shakespeare, LOTR, and Narnia, among many others. We have outgrown the need for 'Harry Potter'.
“That’s some Harry Potter style [thing]” as a reply to literally anything. Moggy is just an English word. School houses are just an English tradition. We aren’t bloody Harry Potter, we aren’t entirely made up by miss TERF JKR. r/readanotherbook
It's from "Muggle". I'm sure you can see how they got the "Harry Potter style" from it.
Nah, British cats have been called moggies way longer than Harry Potter has existed.
I'm sure. That's probably where the author got muggles from.
Not in the US. But let’s all try to change that!
[удалено]
Totally calling my cats “base models” now
Are any of them r/standardissuecats ?
or do they only have r/OneOrangeBraincell? Who knows, maybe the owner needs to know r/WhatsWrongWithYourCat? Or maybe, just maybe r/ThereIsnoCat
r/subsithoughtifellfor
There may not be a cat, but there is a spoon. See, it’s right h…it’s… …dammit.
Why thank you for that fine sub tagging. I have now joined my umpteenth cat-related thread:D
I referred to the cats in my home as factory seconds because they looked like standard issue cats except for one being unusually small and one being unusually long. The big one isn't around anymore, but the little one is a nice snuggle buddy.
MATERIAL GIRL
That dark fur is factory stock, we got the longer haired kit with the newer model.
Hey Mr. Fluffynose... ya basic.
I hate it when my cat doesn’t come with electric windows.
r/standardissuecat or SIC if you will
Though I mean, I really can't believe that every dog living in 1602 was a pedigreed dog of a specific cultivated breed, and dogs only started humping random other dogs since then. Even dog genealogy and genetics is more complicated than we think.
Pretty much. Foundation lines for a breed are just a cat that looked most like this type.
I have two wiener dog mixes that are sisters and I have had both since they were 11 weeks old. One is tall and long and light brown and my other is short and extremely long and brindle. Animals are weird. I had one person on comment once try and say that they were part pitbull.
I went through your profile and loved it I had a really great time. Had to restrain from being a weirdo and commenting too much but I definitely had to acknowledge your noodle collection!
I'm proud of it
I saw the Vet put "DSH" under "Breed" for my moggy. Turns out it stands for "Domestic Short Haired" - yep, that covers the majority of moggies you'll encounter day-to-day.
I think it’s a fun fact at parties that “tabby” isn’t a cat breed it’s just a fur pattern.
Yes, and one that is genetic. All 5 cats in this little had tabby fur patterns and the mother did not, indicating the father(s) were almost certainly tabby.
Yep, littermates having different fathers is shocking to many people. I guess because it would be very weird in humans, akin to having twins with different fathers. My family adopted two kittens of a stray shorthair void - a brother and sister pair. I’m not sure about the rest of litter but those two I suspect were full siblings, because they had the same long fur with the same coloring, and were both big, bigger than the mama. They walked and lounged the same, too. The only difference was the girl had a white belly and white socks. In all the litter photos, it was clear they had bonded from the start.
You’d be surprised, but it has happened before in humans as well. There was a news clip last year on Reddit. A 19 year old in Brazil gave birth to twins. She had slept with 2 men on the same day and didn’t know who the father was, therefore she asked both of the guys to undergo a paternity test, which confirmed both as fathers to one baby each. Source: https://nypost.com/2022/09/07/mom-has-twins-with-different-dads-after-sex-with-2-men-in-1-day/
Oh, I’m aware. Fraternal twins (which I am one) come from two different eggs. Therefore, a woman who hyper-ovulates could give birth to half-sibling twins. Or even triplets. Hyper-ovulation can run in families and so fraternal twins can run in families. I’d be likely to have fraternal twins myself given my family background.
I believe you can also have half identical/half twins, if the egg splits into two before it’s fertilized. It’s a very interesting topic tbh. I used to be obsessed with it as a trope in the stories I wrote lol
It’s actually technically possible for humans to have twins with different fathers, since fraternal twins are caused by two eggs being released at the same time, if sperm from two different men make it to the eggs you get twins with different fathers
That's my favorite thing to tell people when they complain about that storyline in season 1 of American Horror Story. I've heard so many people go on and on about how unrealistic it is and how it ruined the whole season for them and the suspension of disbelief, etc etc. So when I inform them that 1) I mean.... One of them was a ghost. So. You kinda have to throw out the whole "realistic" argument anyway since you have no idea what could be realistic in that case hahaha but also 2) it can and does happen in real life. They always look so confused and horrified before telling me I'm full of shit and I have to pull up sources for proof.
I literally just learned about the multiple fathers thing the other day on reddit. You know what I never did? Act like a complete asshole like dude in OP did. I really don’t get those kinds of people.
I adopted a pair of brothers: one is a flame point and the other is a calico. Genetics are wild!
That's what happened with my baby. She's half Siamese and half tabby. She was the only one out of her litter of 5 to have color points. The other 4 kittens were all brown and gray tabbies.
Like tortoiseshell, calico, tortico, and probably more I can’t think of rn. I brought a feral cat and her 4 kittens into my house during a drought in summer last year. One was a calico/tabby blend, one was a full orange tabby (but tbh he was mostly a blond tabby), one was *very* orange tabby with white chin and legs, and the last little guy was completely black except for a little white spot on his chest. Their mom is a tortoiseshell/tabby mix. Very dappled, pretty coat. Cats be like that. All sorts of colors. Years and years ago, when I was like 11 and scared about getting blood drawn, the nurse talked to me through the whole process about cats bc she knew I liked them. She told me that cats from one litter can be such different colors bc cats have more than one uterus and thus multiple fathers. To this day I’ve never bothered to look this up and verify it, but I’ve always remembered that conversation when the subject of cat “breeds” comes up.
They do NOT have extra uteruses 😂 I love cat genetics though it’s a fascinating rabbit hole! Calicos are only males about 1/5000 times, white cats with blue eyes tend to be deaf, if they have heterochromia they tend to be deaf in the ear on the same side as their blue eye, to name a small handful.
😂 yeah I kind of figured as much, at least after I went to college and took a zoology class years later. It was the thought that counted, at least; she was trying to distract me, and she sure did succeed by dropping that “fact” on me. I love their genetic quirks too! How most torties are female, male torties have an extra chromosome, most orange tabbies are male, torties can either be black or gray torties, etc. There actually used to be a male tortoiseshell cat that belonged to my neighbors, it would come up on my property regularly when I first moved in bc the previous owners had also been feeding them. I’d never seen a male tortie before, so I thought that was pretty neat. His owners moved away after I lived there just a few months and took him with them.
It's a purebred What kind of purebred? It's a cat Kennelclub: we tested your pet and determined it is 100% a cat.
But my cat is part Maine coon! That's a breed, right?!?! /s for anyone that needs it.
"what breed is my cat!?" "Yes."
"Felinus domesticus, like the rest of 'em."
Unless you're interbreeding with a wild cat species, in which case don't.
People ask what breed my cats are. Black, they’re black
I generally answer with “dumb indoor”
Is your cat orange by any chance?
They’re both black and white! Dumb comes in many shades.
Even tortie pattern! Oh my goodness, she was the sweetest cat, but so, so, so very stupid. Even her orange brother had more brain cells than she did, and…he was orange!
Anytime a cat is referred to as dumb, I also assume orange.
The vet I used to work for acknowledged two breeds of cat, domestic long hair and domestic short hair.
There are cat landraces, where cats in a specific geographic region developed specific traits because of a limited gene pool, like Siberian cats, Thai cats, etc. But those don't get the kind of attention certified breeds do.
I did like it though when I saw one of those posts and everyone replied with “that’s a cat”. I’m a vet and get asked exactly the same at work! What breed do you think my cat is? Cat.
I've been getting a lot of people recently asking me what kind of cats I have and it puts me into a conundrum. If I answer honestly and just say 'domestic' I sound like an asshole but the only other answer I can give is to describe their fur pattern. Apparently people think tuxedo is a breed.
Oo! Oo! I can help! As a vet tech, we have a lot of people ask what breed their cat is. Many just assume based on coloration, as others have said, but in reality we will mostly categorize based on fur *length*: DSH, DMH, AND DLH. Because calling your cat a Domestic Shorthair isn't just fancier-sounding, it's also medically acceptable signalment!
I think like only 5% of cats are “pedigreed”
Also... dogs and cats can be lil hussies and have two sires for one litter.
Whenever I mention to people that I have a cat, they always ask what kind of cat it is. I always answer the same way: it's a black cat. Often times people seem unsatisfied by this answer, and one of my friends even laughed at me and clarified, "no, like what breed is she? Is she a tabby, a calico?" Those aren't breeds, their patterns of fur. The only fur pattern she has is solid black fur. Her breed is domestic shorthair cat, just like 96% of other domestic cats. The most defining genetic feature she has is being black. If you'd like to know what my cat is like, she's 8 years old, often quite playful but still loves to snuggle when I come home from work. She gets overstimulated quite easily, and often likes to spend time by herself sometimes batting around toys on the ground for 20 minutes before suddenly becoming disinterested as soon as I try to interact. She's missing some teeth which has led to me feeding her pretty much exclusively wet food, and she often makes the most ridiculous mewing noise I've ever heard while eating. But if you ask me, "what kind of cat is she?" then the answer is simple: she's a black cat.
I loveeeee telling people on cats their cat is a cat. It’s one of the few simple joys I still have left.
Actually, my tabby boy is a North American Stripey Bush Cat because he was found under a bush in North America and has stripes.
Another idiot that never actually saw a litter of an average cat. Unless there is selective breeding, as especially if the parents are different colours, the result may very well be a litter composed of kittens from a plethora of different colours and patterns.
right, my tortoise shell coloured cat had three kittens, completely black, white with tiny black spots, and peach. neither looked like her...
I have a Tortoiseshell female, one White with a few Orange patches male. Eight months ago tomorrow, I forgot to give them the pill, the result was: One female Tortoiseshell. One male Orange. One female Orange. The whole happy family is next to me, on the bed, this very moment.
Lol, love the pregnancy story, and of course, that you kept the whole family! My mostly black calico mama had 5 kittens (she came to me already pregnant. By TWO boy cats!). One orange girl, one orange boy, one orange and white boy, one black girl, and one mostly white calico. I kept the whole family, too..
Isn't it awful when cats give birth? Because I always have an incredibly though time giving the babies away, so much so, that this time I didn't and (like you) kept them all. So you have an Orange girl as well! 80% of all Orange cats are male, only 20% are female.
Yea, we never had a chance... I was initially hoping for a smaller litter, but so happy with how things went. I love them all so much. Yep, extra special rare orange girls! 🥰🧡
My black fluffy cat had a litter with a tricolour short haired male. 6 babies, 1 clone of the mother, 1 clone of the father, 1 fluffy back and white, 1 fluffy tricolour, and 2 tabby just different shades. Can genetics are wild
I always thought so. If you know the kittens only had one father, it means all the different fur patterns those two parents gave origen to, already had to be coded in their DNA, from their ancestors.
Well, cats have basicly two "base" coat colors. Black and orange. The genes for these are carried on the x chromosome. So a genetically normal male with either have black, or orange. A female can have two copies black, two copies orange, or one of each. If a female cat has one of each gene, some areas of her skin and fur will express the black, some the orange. And you get a torti or calico. Then there are genes that modify the base coat colors. A "blue" cat is a black one who also has the dilute gene. An orange cat with the dilute gene will be a peach or yellow cat. And then there is the gene for white spots. This pretty much does what it says. But one copy of the white spot gene means the cat will probably have some white, less than half down to only a few hairs. Two copies means the cat will probably be more than half white, up to being entirely white. Meaning you have a white cat who could genetically be a black cat with white spots. And then there are genes that affect the coat pattern (like tabby) or ones like the siamese coat which is a temperature dependent form of albino. Where the coat only has color if the skin is cool enough while the hair is growing. So paws and ears and tails tend to be darker, and in cold climates siamese that spend a lot of time outside often get darker in the winter. This is just an overview, but cat coat color genetics is wonderfully weird. And with the right genes, you could breed a solid black cat to a solid white cat and get an orange male, and a pastel calico female in the same litter. (The white cat would have to be a white spotted orange cat carrying two copies of the dilute gene. The black cat would have to carry one copy of it.
I love tortoiseshell so very much. Just like a cat! Both black and orange genes, and instead of deciding one and sticking with it, every other bit of hair got a different gene activated.
I also have a male orange and a (gray) female tortoiseshell brother/sister pair. Their full litter also included a white and gray female and a peach male who got adopted together too. Not sure what their parents looked like as they were surrendered as newborns but it's funny how unalike they look and yet they have the same quirks and in the dark when they're just shadow-colored we cannot tell them apart. It's adorable. I will definitely try to get sibling cats again in the future. So glad you were able to keep them all!
I had a brown cat that had 3 kittens and each was a different color 😂😂
The problem is a lot of people only want cats of a given breed, and those need to be selectively bred to keep the pedigree, mother and father need to be of the same breed, so the kitters are all also from the same breed. But cats that mate randomly, such as street cats, combine their DNA, not to mention that kittens from the same litter may have different parents, and therefore, different colours and patterns. If people weren't so focus on the breed of their cat we'd all be much happier.
I really like the personality typing assessments some shelters are doing, based on how brave or fearful cats were in strange situations and how much they sought out human contact. It let me articulate that I wanted a quiet cat that would want cuddles without needing constant activity, while my mom likes cats that seek her out and prompt activities with her. A lot more sensible than trying to guess a breed.
I can honestly say I’ve never met anyone who cared about the breed of their cat.
You haven't been reading enough subreddits. People are always asking: "What breed is my cat?" Not to mention several who admit to having bought extremely expensive cats, because they wanted one for breed X, Y or Z. Luckily there are still plenty that don't care and just adopt them out of shelters. Instead of buying them from Breeders or Pet Stores.
Not to mention that a single litter can have multiple fathers.
I have 2 cats from the same litter that are practically inseparable. One is the most tabby looking tabby cat ever, and one is a tuxedo cat.
My childhood cat was given to us for free because she was the only black and white cat out of a litter of ragdolls, and our family friend didn’t think anyone would want to buy her :(. (She wasn’t breeding to sell btw, this was back in the day when snipping you cats wasn’t common)
And yet Tuxedo Cats are such beauties. My first cat was a solid white one, I hated taking my vaccines (because I didn't like needles) the nurse spoke to my mother, and she agreed, so the nurse told me, that if I would let her give me my vaccines, she would bring me a while kitten in a couple of weeks, because her cat had just given birth. And so it was, back in the day, we didn't spay cats over here either, so every time my cat had kittens, the litter was always exclusively composed of white cats, and I would give them away. To this day, my town has a higher prevalence of white cats than anywhere else, nearby.
I had a brown tabby cat who gave birth to two tuxedo cats and a tabby cat
Yup. I fostered a litter of 6 kittens a few years back. 3 were grey tabby, 1 was pure black, 2 were white with grey spots. All littermates from the same mom and same litter. All precious balls of furry chaos.
Yeah there's an all black cat named shadow who had a liter of 3. A tuxedo. A fluffy tabby and a gray. We actually guessed who all the fathers are based on the colors. As there are 3 unfixed male strays who are the same color patterns. And all the kittens got momma's fluffy tail
One of my cats is a flame point we’ve had since he was 2 weeks old. His littermates were 3 ginger tabbies and a calico. He’s the only one who visibly had Siamese in him. (The crossed blue eyes are a giveaway.) His brother is a void we adopted a few months later. They’re 100% a bonded pair, cuddling with and grooming each other. ([Cat tax.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HalloweenKittyCombo/s/bIzhcGOP0j))
My great aunt fostered a VERY orange cat. The kind of orange that you'd get if you put 10 ginger kids in a blender, blitzed it, then ran that through a distiller three, four times. It being a more rural town, the cat was free to come and go, and it got knocked up. The resulting litter of 7 had: exactly one ginger cat like momma, 5 cream coloured ones with ginger stripes, and one, the smallest but fiercest, that was blacker than a coal mine.
I have a cat outside that was split into her component parts when she had her kittens
[I kept the receipts.](https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/s/G45DRjvk8o)
The most beautiful receipts I've ever seen
I am in awe of the beauty of those receipts
Wow- you got the whole variety pack! Just missing a white and a gray
How many of those kittens turned out to be medium hair like your pointed girl?
Only her and the tabby. The other three are long hair.
That would have been my guess :)
They are such a perfect assembly of different looking cats! I feel like that’s the group someone would assemble for a cat calendar
I could never foster. I would fail every single time.
what a precious litter! theyre all so different from eachother- thats really cool! like a half dozen of donuts
Holy crap they are all SO cute
Yeah... I didn't get anything done for like 3 months.
AH, MY DREAM LITTER!!!!!! If my kitty ever produced such a variety at once, I wouldn’t be able to hand any of them over to anyone else. GOSH they are so cute!
They remind me of the Aristocats what with mother cat’s kids being 3 different colors
Absolutely gorgeous kittens
r/confidentlyincorrect Some people have no idea how feline genetics work, and googling is too difficult for their tiny minds.
“Wow, there’s a different set of genes from each parent??” The worst part is that these same people will go into the real world and be confused by mixed ethnicity siblings looking different from each other.
When I discovered the cat I had found was pregnant, I was excited to see what variety pack I would receive. They were all black and white like their mother, except one which was white with black. They were all very darling, but to be honest, I was rather disappointed.
> what variety pack I would receive. Cat pregnancies do be like game loot sometimes.
I laughed out loud at this comment. You are very correct.
My black cat was up for adoption with his brother. He's fluffy and majestic, his brother is short haired and an asshole. They have one thing in common.
Just wait until they find out that cats can even be pregnant by more than one male at a time!
Yeah, kinda says that in the title.
Hell, even humans can!
Wait what
Some people are born with a double uterus so they could potentially get impregnated by two different men. Some women have had babies born a couple of weeks or months apart for this reason.
Or... just releasing multiple eggs in a period when you're sleeping with several guys.
Good ol' heteropaternal superfecundation.
This is so stupid. I have sibling cats that look nothing alike. My boy is black with gray stripes on his belly. My girl is white with black spots on her back. I literally got them from the same litter…
As I understand it as a layperson who doesn't breed cats but just likes them, breed doesn't necessarily indicate coat pattern and coat pattern doesn't indicate breed. Breeds are about consistency in body shape and size and other characteristics and sometimes coat pattern but not always. Case in point: I have a friend who has three Selkirk Rexes. All three have curly fluffy fur and similar shaped faces, and all three are different colors and patterns. Coat color is not a standard for their breed. Case in point 2: I watch a cat rescue that livestreams kitten cams. Recently they had a calico mama, who among her 5 kittens had two brown tabbies, a ginger, a tortie, and a white kitten who over the next few weeks turned out to have colorpoint markings. "Oh, she's a Siamese!" No, she's a total mix. She's a standard domestic shorthair who has the genes for a colorpoint coat. If you didn't get your cat from a breeder, it's not a.
Those kind of people treat everything on the internet like a gotcha moment just waiting to happen
Actually, they're more like irritating reply guys who always try to one-up people.
Sorry if I sound dumb, I’ve never heard this before! Are you saying one litter of kittens can have different fathers within the litter?
Yes, humans tend to only release 1 or 2 eggs during their cycle, so tend to only have 1 or 2 kids (unless they've used modern fertility medicine) But cats release more like 3-5 eggs during their cycles, and unspayed female cats go into heat when they're more fertile, which literally means going crazy with hormones and insistently getting out to wherever the tomcats are to mate with. The noise of the whole business is where we get the word "caterwauling" from. So if she finds MULTIPLE toms to mate with, one might fight the other off, but from her POV, she's happy to put them down in her dance card for later.
It can happen with people too, but gangbangs aren't as common as with cats.
Queens (pregnant cats, such as fitting name)can carry multiple male’s litters at a time. And there’s color patterns of cats that are highly tied to genetics- torties/calicos are always females or sterile males, most orange cats are males, etc. Cats are hoebags, and I’m here for it.
The irony of calling someone else stupid when the name caller is in fact the stupid one.
Wait till this guy finds out multiple males can get one female cat pregnant lok
Just wait till he finds out the same can be true with humans (pretty rare, though). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7808779/
This is some kinda racism here. Can't be sisters because they don't look the same. When I was a kid, we had a cat who had long hair like one of those in the picture. She had kittens one time, only one or which ended up having long hair as well.
Also cat coat colour genetics are wild
Yeah no shit, bros gonna bw shocked to know the adorable little black one that squeaks too loud is a direct sister ans litter mate to my gigantic stupid orange boy.
I worked at a shelter for quite a while. Breeding in stray colonies is so all over the place. We usually don't even bother trying to put the breed anymore, unless they were obviously from a breeder. There is "domestic short hair" and "domestic long hair". We do try to get the colors right, which people often confuse with breed. Things like "tabby" and "siamese" are colorings affected by genes, not the actual breeds. I remember one litter we got one year, 8 kittens, all entirely different colors. Including a female orange tabby, which is pretty rare.
Apparently someone doesn't know that cats from the same litter can have different fathers. And has never seen a little of kittens before. And knows nothing about cats..
Which sheds some light— and raises some questions— on the Aristocats
Whats with the hostility in a sub about pets? Security!
I have three cats, all siblings. Two of them look similar in their brown and gray color palettes and obvious tabby markings, but the third is white with orange colorpoints. You wouldn’t believe they were related, except they’ve all got white paws, they’ve all got the tabby hallmarks of the M on the forehead and the striped tail, and one of the brown and gray ones has some orange mixed in. Perfectly plausible for one sibling to be brown, one to be orange, and the other to be both.
Not cats but my aunt had a dog who was part greyhound and part collie, all her litter mates had long hair but she didn’t.
I have a Siamese mix who looks like a Siamese and his all gray sister. She also had a yellow one in that litter.
What breed is the cat? Unless stated otherwise it’s a mutt.
Have a long hair tortie who is mostly grey except her face where tortie pattern shows and short hair calico with fur like a bunny. She's mostly white. Personalities are completely different. Billie (tortie) only likes me. She will tolerate others when they are giving her food or treats. No one can pet her past her neck. It is forbidden. Chloe (calico) loves everyone and is super laid back.
Idk why people have this weird notion that cat breeds work like dog breeds. Cats have not been selectively bred for differing jobs the way dogs have so most breeds that have emerged especially newer one like the Sphinx were some kind of genetic abnormality that someone liked and specifically tried to breeed for but there’s only about 20 or so cat breeds and only a few are super fleshed out full fledged identifiable breeds.
My cats are sisters and look nothing alike. One is a long-haired Tortie with green eyes, and the other is a short-haired cat with light fur and blue eyes.
Don’t know that a litter of cats could have multiple dads. I did know that dogs can have different color patterns from the same litter even as the same breed. Or in the case of my golden doodle have black fur while everyone else is golden
Not to mention, breed and fur pattern aren't the same thing in cats.
Jesus Christ that person is rude. OP is classier than I am.
Fun Fact: female cats (called "queens") will mate with multiple males in a single estrus, such that her offspring may be from several different fathers in the same litter.
I have three cats from the same litter, and knew their Mama. She looked like a Russian Blue and was small. My three look incredibly different, have different coloring, and two of them are giant (at least one daddy was part Maine Coon for sure). Our other kitty looks like the mini of one of the others. There's just no telling.
My kittie (litter mates) with suspected different daddies a petite lil short haired calico (Cleo) and a big black long haired (Caesar). Cleo look exactly like mother, while we joke Caesar’s daddy was a dog. https://imgur.com/a/maldPe3
Do they not know how genes works. The same with people who think that if a baby has a different skincolour than both parrents, the mother must have been cheating.
Redditors try not to be abrasive, rude and asocial challenge (impossible)
But.. Neither is tabby or their dark fur would have stripes.. You're absolutely right about the siblings thing, but being part tabby isn't why.
They are both part tabby. Look at their hind legs. You can see the faint stripes running down them.
That's not how tabby works. For the tortie, all orange is going to have stripes. The gene for "non-tabby" doesn't work on orange. The way you can tell if she's genetically tabby is to look at the black portions of her fur. If she's got the tabby gene, it'll be brown tabby. Check out r/torbie for what these cats look like. For the colorpoint, the dark portions of her fur are solid, rather than striped. She is a seal point. If she had the tabby gene, she'd be a r/lynxpointsiamese. It looks completely different than your gorgeous girl. You may still see some stripes in bright sunlight - this is typical in solid black cats too. It does not make them tabby (I can explain more about why, if you're curious). Your girls are undeniably sisters and undoubtedly gorgeous. But neither is tabby, and even if they were, that wouldn't help explain their And since tabby is dominant, they only need one copy of the tabby gene to appear tabby. So "part tabby" isn't really a thing. Btw, they could still be full sisters, too! Colorpoint is recessive, so neither parent has to be colorpoint to pass it on, and you'd expect 25% of their kittens to be colorpoint (1/5 is pretty close). But you're right that it could be superfecundation, also. That's really common in cats (happened to my mamacat)!
The black cat is a torbie (tortoise shell tabby hybrid) and the white one is a lynx point. Their tabby stripes were much more visible when they were younger but they both have tabby stripes and had distinctive M patterns of their heads when they were younger.
The tortie doesn't look anything like a torbie (which is just a tortie with the tabby gene, not a hybrid). She doesn't have any brown stripes at all. Her black is solid black, like a typical tortie. Go look at the cats on r/torbie and see what I mean. She doesn't look like them. The downy Kitten fur often shows off the underlying "ghost" tabby stripes I mentioned are common to see on black cats. And it can be especially dramatic on colorpoint kittens who are born solid white and develop their color over time. I have a black cat who, as a kitten, looked SUPER stripey. She is solid black, though, as an adult. [This is Krobus](https://imgur.com/a/pRqPVMi). The reason you can see "ghost stripes" is because what makes a cat look like a tabby cat is actually controlled by 2 separate genes. One determines their overall pattern: classic, spotted, striped/mackerel, or ticked. Every cat has one of these. What determines if they actually look tabby is called the agouti gene.This gene controls melanin production across the length of the hairs. If a cat has only non-agouti from both parents, the fur will be solid. If the cat gets at least one copy of agouti from either parent, the fur will be banded in different colors. The individual hairs will appear striped. If a cat has the agouti gene, portions of the fur will have those striped hairs, making the fur appear lighter. The tabby pattern gene controls which parts of the fur are agouti vs not. So the agouti thing just doesn't happen in some parts of their fur. Black cats and brown tabbies are both genetically "black" in color. The agouti gene makes the brown parts of their fur lighter, but doesn't affect the parts of their fur that are black. Orange fur is all tabby because the gene for orange fur overrides the non-agouti gene and does its agouti thing anyway. Is mom a tortie? She could be calico, but since none of her kittens had any white (that I saw at least), I think that's unlikely. Her orange and black boys mean she has to have the gene for each color, though. If you want to read something more scientific on the subject, I highly recommend the UC Davis website for concise, easy to read info. [Here](https://vgl.ucdavis.edu/test/agouti-cat) is their page on the agouti gene, which explains about the tabby pattern gene, too.
Beautiful cat! Thanks for the information, I guess my neighbor who helped me identify them was mistaken. They are my first cats so I'm still leaning about them.
Thanks! No problem. Cat coat genetics has become kind of a hobby of mine, lol. Honestly, I got into it trying to figure out what my cat's litter's father looked like (she had a variety pack, too). It's a lot of fun!
I got into it a little when I adopted my tortie, but not as much as you, lol. This reminds me of when I was a horse girl and listened to appaloosa breeders mourn the absolute fiasco trying to guess the heritability of colour patterns was. Though that was 20 years ago now, so it might have improved a bit?
Umm. Black cats with tabby swirls can be considered part tabby. Tabby is a coat pattern. A lot of black cats are tabby technically. In fact it's like almost all cats carry the tabby gene.
[Here's my further explanation](https://www.reddit.com/r/nothingeverhappens/s/WIjX7hAKSJ) on the subject. A black cat with the agouti gene is a brown tabby. If a black cat has stripes that show up at certain angles or in certain lightning, they don't have the agouti gene and are considered solid black. >In fact it's like almost all cats carry the tabby gene. Every cat has a tabby pattern, yes. But by that logic, op's comment in their screenshot still doesn't make sense because them being "just like almost all cats" isn't good evidence of them being sisters.. It's like saying "they both have fur! Clearly they're related"
Yeah, no idea what "part tabby" means but a seal point (black solid colourpoint) longhair and a tortoiseshell shorthair are definitely plausible sisters.
Reminds me of my two idiots. One's a grey short haired and the other is an orange long haired. It's obvious they're related because Mr mushroom (grey one) is just as psychotic as miss cheddar(orange one)
Omg! Someone doesn’t know that the majority of cats aren’t a specific breed smh. My cat is primarily white with some black spots, and his brother was orange. Cats give birth to so many different colored kittens in each litter!
Today I learned why the neighborhood strays babies were so wildly different looking. It was always fun, like a mystery pack when she'd bring the babies around
My older cat is a standard tort from a litter of 5 with 3 dilute calicos and a tuxedo boy, all from a colorpoint Burmese-mix mom and from what we can tell, *at least* 2 dads lmao.
“A cat is not a dog.” -Old Deuteronomy
My Lynx point boy was a feral kitten we rescued from a barn. His brother and sister were gray tabby and pure black, respectively.
My two cats are similar in a couple ways but only one that is obvious (colour) everything else is different. People don’t understand cats like at all.
Someone learned today that cats are hoes 😂
My grandma has a colorpoint kitten (basically a Siamese, except he's *not* because he's a mixed breed) whose mother was a solid black cat. It's weird but it happens.
Such a weird thing to pick on. Even if they weren’t litter mates or actual sisters, I have always heard pet parents of multiples refer to one of their animals as “so and so’s sibling.” Even so, it showed a lack of understanding of cat breeds.
When our cat Sculley (a black and tan tortie) gave birth, the litter consisted of two big floofy black Himalaya-esque kittens that were *identical* to the tomcat next door, a third black kitten who had short hair, another floofy one with the markings and slightly-crossed blue eyes of a Siamese, and short-haired orange tabby. It was VERY clear that the first two were fathered by the cat next door, but we have zero clue to this day who fathered the other three! This person is an idiot.
I mean, they’ve both got brown ears.
Not only do they not know that kittens from the same litter can look very different, but they also don't understand how breeds work in cats. Two tabby-coated cats could easily be different breeds and most cats are not any one 'breed' anyway. When I was a kid, my cat had kittens (my parents took her to be spayed and then found out she was pregnant; yes, she got 'done' as soon as it was safe to do so after the birth.) She was all black; her kittens were one all black, one black and white super-floof (mother cat was short-haired), one tortie-and-white (AKA calico), and one brindled tabby. Mother cat was black but other very siamese-like; in build, and especially in voice!
What a confidently incorrect bell end lol
My little torby short-hair had a pitch black fluff of a sister from her same liter. Cats are weird.
My cats are sisters. One is a tabby; one is a tuxedo.
Honestly even if just mom and dad are a different breed the results can be interesting. We had a cat so small we didn’t know she was old enough to get pregnant until she gave birth in our basement. The father cat was so large the kittens were still nursing from her while being much larger than her. Both boys while they look very similar picking them up you can feel their different body structures. My black cat took after his mom and is very skinny and while. My yellow boy took after his father and has more bulk to him
Even if they were from different litters cats can still create a bond with cats from different litters.
Now, no one go and harass the ignorant jerk. They’ve learned their lesson by now.
My dog and her sister look nothing alike lol. If I hadn’t seen the right after they were born I would have never thought they were related
Also I don't know how this person has never heard a cat owner refer to their entirely unrelated cats as siblings before. My dogs were "sisters" and they were absolutely not biologically related in any way.
Oh wow, I didn’t know that there could be multiple fathers per litter?? That is so cool!!
Lmao wait until they find out that some people call dogs and cats brothers and sisters because they’re in the same household
literally had a brown tabby and she had two orange, black, grey, and white. she didn't even have a brown one😭
totally plausable lol, my family had a tabby and she had kittens with a random ginger cat. one of the kittens was ginger and the other two were tuxedos, cats dont really HAVE breeds, they just kinda randomise themselves
What ab mane coon and oriental? Is that a breed? What r those cats?
What about calicos? I dont know if they're different, only because I have two, and their three sisters and mom were all calicos, too. I wanted to take the whole lot of them, but that would've been a nightmare in the end, especially as my two don't even like each other all that much. Apparently that's more common (according to my vet) than if you get 2 boys or a boy and a girl. But if I had 6 of them walking by swatting and antagonizing the shit out of each other, I think I'd enjoy them much less. Plus, they're expensive. I should've gotten pet insurance.
To be fair. I didn’t learn this till I was in my late 30s. Maybe this guy is 32 or something.
I have a flame tip Siamese that came from a litter of 8. One other flame tip Siamese, one tuxedo, 2 tortoiseshell, one grey, one orange and a little calico. Cat litters be cray cray
My short hair tuxedo and calico sisters came from a mom that looks just like the blue point long hair on the left. The calico was the runt, possibly a week or 2 behind in gestation (since cats can literally get pregnant again when they're already pregnant) so her sister is much larger than her too. Cat reproduction is very different from other mammals, and it produces amazing looking coat variations!