Anyone know how I can tell what breed please ?

Katie M

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A lot of cats aren't any particular breed, although she looks beautiful.

Did you buy her from a breeder?
 

lutece

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What a cute little kitten! :redheartpump: You say that you bought her... was she bought from someone who represented themselves as a breeder?

I would describe your kitten as a tortoiseshell domestic shorthair. Her coat is a bit fluffy, so it's also possible she may turn out to be a longhair when her coat develops fully... but right now I think she looks more like a shorthair with fuzzy kitten coat. Most cats are not any particular breed, but that doesn't make them any less special; domestic shorthairs are great cats!
 
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Els90

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A lot of cats aren't any particular breed, although she looks beautiful.

Did you buy her from a breeder?
Hello !
no I just bought her from someone who was selling a litter . When I got her she was in an awful state . I just wondered if she was any kind of breed. I don’t know allot about cats but I’ve recently ended up with two little cuties and she’s quite different looking.
 
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Els90

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What a cute little kitten! :redheartpump: You say that you bought her... was she bought from someone who represented themselves as a breeder?

I would describe your kitten as a tortoiseshell domestic shorthair. Her coat is a bit fluffy, so it's also possible she may turn out to be a longhair when her coat develops fully... but right now I think she looks more like a shorthair with fuzzy kitten coat. Most cats are not any particular breed, but that doesn't make them any less special; domestic shorthairs are great cats!
I got her from someone online .
so I would say she’s a domestic short hair ? . I don’t know much about cats but I’ve got her now and want to know more about her . Just wondered if there was a way of knowing if she was a certain breed .
she’s really special .
 

lutece

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Yes, domestic shorthair is what you call a shorthaired cat without any specific breed. Most cats simply don't have any breed ancestry at all, each one has its own unique and wonderful blend of traits from the domestic cat gene pool. She's obviously a very special little girl and will be a gorgeous adult :)
 
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Els90

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Caspers Human

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She does look different but in a cute way.

I’d name her “Gremlin” or “Mogwai.” :D

Color characteristics are controlled partly by genetics but also during development in the womb. The develping fetus’s position in the womb and juxtaposition relative to other babies has as much or more to do with a cat’s color pattern as its DNA.

To simplify (or oversimplify) DNA gives the cat a “starting point,” if you will, but the final results are determined as the kitten grows inside it’s mother.
 
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lutece

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The develping fetus’s position in the womb and juxtaposition relative to other babies has as much or more to do with a cat’s color pattern as its DNA.
I'm still skeptical of this idea. Here's the thread where we discussed it before:
If you have found any new evidence or references, I'd love to hear about it!
 

The Goodbye Bird

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I'm still skeptical of this idea.
As far as I know it's true. All cats that are both black and orange are the same coat-colour genotype (well, all torties are the same to each other and all tri-colours are the same to each other, ignore dilutions for the moment) and all the variation is determined by factors outside genetics.

X-linked activation seems to be random, in other words, which X-chromosome in that particular cell will have activated and show its colour seems random. Let's say it's a cell on the shoulder. Will the hair growing out of that cell be orange or black? Will the cat be orange or black on its shoulder? Random.

But what it seems like to me is that the cells divide for a while as orange ones and after a time, suddenly get bored of that and activate the opposite chromosome and give rise to bunches of black ones. If the cells of one embryo are able to see the cells of other embryos then ostensibly you end up with two siblings that were pushed up against each other in the womb and one gets to be mostly black while the other turns out mostly orange, at least on the sides they were touching.

This seems to be borne out by some kittens in a litter of a lot of calicos/torties being mostly one or the other.

I can't verify the part about embryos touching each other having an effect but I've always thought it was true.
 

lutece

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X-inactivation and white spotting patterns happen during development and are unique to the individual... that's well known.

Cells don't "divide for a while as orange ones" and later on "activate the opposite chromosome," though. X-inactivation happens at a specific time in development and then it's done. The inactivated X chromosome is "crumpled up" into a compact mass called a Barr body. X-inactivation happens in all mammals including humans.

What I'm skeptical of is the statement that "the develping fetus’s position in the womb and juxtaposition relative to other babies has as much or more to do with a cat’s color pattern as its DNA." I'm not aware of any evidence for this at all.

Some kittens have more orange and some have more black, and that's just a natural result of the randomness of the process.

This link might help to visualize how the kittens are positioned in the uterus during fetal development. Unless they are twins sharing a placenta, kittens aren't curled up next to each other as you might imagine. Each fetus is surrounded by placental tissue (imagine "pigs in a blanket") and the fetuses are distributed along the horns of the uterus like a string of pearls.
 
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Kittycatcat

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She does !!! Strange looking I think . That’s why I was curious if you could tell a breed by her features.
She is absolutely beautiful 😍
A domestic short-haired torti. What have you named her?
 
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Els90

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Torti is her colouring right ?

Lule - meaning flower in Albanian .
)pronounced Lula)
Seemed to fit her well as she has grown so much since we got her
First picture is the day I got her and she was I’ll and thin and had fleas and allot of toilet troubles
Second pictures is her now settling in well and starting to play and gain weight .
 

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Kittycatcat

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Torti is her colouring right ?

Lule - meaning flower in Albanian .
)pronounced Lula)
Seemed to fit her well as she has grown so much since we got her
First picture is the day I got her and she was I’ll and thin and had fleas and allot of toilet troubles
Second pictures is her now settling in well and starting to play and gain weight .
That's a lovely name 😊 Yes Tortie is her coloring. She has such a sweet face.
 

lutece

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Yes, "torti" is an alternate spelling that some people use for tortie or tortoiseshell. I agree, she has a lovely name :)
 

The Goodbye Bird

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Cells don't "divide for a while as orange ones" and later on "activate the opposite chromosome," though. X-inactivation happens at a specific time in development and then it's done.
So what's your theory on why two tortie cats with the same genotype have different or even opposite colouring? If it's because of where those cells go after that developmental point, why would one embryo have those cells go to its shoulder and have an orange shoulder and the other one have those cells go to its butt and have an orange butt?

Also, why are cloned torties and calicos locked to their single X-activation of the cell that was used (being just one colour or the other)? Wouldn't they reach that developmental point and all their cells would pick again?
 

lutece

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Our human brains always want to come up with explanations for things... but it's random. If you look at lots of litters of kittens with torties and calicos you'll see that sometimes the kittens look similar, sometimes different, there really isn't a pattern.

As far as cloned torties, I'm only aware of one example, CC and her "mother" (clone parent?) Rainbow (torbie and white). I'm not an expert on cloning but as far as I know, the X-inactivation process starts over in cloning, so CC would have probably been a "cryptic torbie" (visually brown tabby and white, with small amounts of red tabby patches that may have been either hidden "under" her white markings, or difficult to distinguish in the brown tabby pattern). Cryptic torbies and torties definitely happen from time to time, breeders sometimes have females that look like they are either completely red or completely non-red, but produce both red and non-red kittens like a torbie/tortie. This is due to the random nature of X-inactivation, sometimes you end up with a cat that is either nearly all red or nearly all non-red, just like a long run of heads or tails when flipping a coin.
 

The Goodbye Bird

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Our human brains always want to come up with explanations for things... but it's random. If you look at lots of litters of kittens with torties and calicos you'll see that sometimes the kittens look similar, sometimes different, there really isn't a pattern.
The reason I always thought the cells switched was the effect of the gene for white spotting on colour distribution. If you're right, however, it just means white spotting has an effect on cell migration.

This is what I read on cloning and calicos:

PROS AND CONS OF CLONING CATS
Tortoiseshell and calico cats are almost always female, which means they have two X chromosomes. One of those X chromosomes contains the gene for orange coat colour. The other X chromosome contains the gene for black coat colour. As the embryo develops, a process called ‘X-linked inactivation’ occurs in its tissues. One or the other X-chromosome in every cell in a tortoiseshell or calico cat embryo is randomly inactivated.

This shows up in hair and skin cells as patches of different colours. If the X-chromosome containing the gene for orange coat colour is inactivated, that cell goes on to produce black coat colour. If the X-chromosome containing the gene for black coat colour is inactivated, the cell produces the orange coat colour. If the deactivation happens early on, it produces relatively large and well-defined patches of colour. If it happens later during development, it produces a brindled effect.

The white patches and the tabby pattern are both caused by different genes entirely.

Regardless of which cell was used to produce Cc, because that cell is already an adult cells, one or other of its X chromosomes would have been inactivated while the donor cat was an embryo. Cc had an equal chance of being orange-and-white (or orange-tabby-and-white) or black-and-white (or tabby-and-white), but would never be calico.


This happens to agree with you about X-activation being permanent but I'm not entirely convinced. I'd have to do more research and find out if there's good evidence for white spotting making the deactivation occur earlier. I'm also not 100% convinced that the cloned cat isn't a hidden calico with her orange spots either covered by white or on the inside somewhere where you can't see them.
 

lutece

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X-inactivation happens too early in development to be switched on or off by white spotting. X-inactivation happens around the same time as gastrulation or slightly earlier. The white spotting mutation in cats is on the KIT gene, which affects the migration and survival of melanoblasts (precursors to pigment cells) from the neural crest. Melanoblast migration happens after X-inactivation has already occurred.

These are two different theories I have heard about why the white spotting mutation causes red and black patches to be less mixed in calicos than tortoiseshells:
  • One theory is that the white spotting mutation reduces the number of melanoblasts, so each precursor cell ends up "covering" a larger area. This is what Mary Lyon thought (she is the person who discovered Lyonization = X-inactivation).
  • Another theory is that the white spotting mutation affects the migration of melanoblasts, causing the red and black areas to be less mixed up, because the precursor cells didn't migrate as much.
  • It's also possible that the white spotting mutation could have both effects (affecting both the migration and survival of melanoblasts).
In any case, though, X-inactivation has already occurred prior to this stage.
 
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