How would you call this color

[chikita]

Hello

I'm currently very much into cat genetics and terms for different fur colors so I would like to know what the color of my cat's fur would be called. I don't plan to breed with him since he's neutered so I'm asking out of curiosity.

I know he's a tabby with white marks(paws, throat etc.) but he also has grey/blue in his paws. His belly is also obviously spotted but I heard that most tabby cats have spotted bellies so he's mackeral? Would you describe his fur color to be more brown or grey? Is there a term for a mix between brown and grey?

Here's my little baby

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• chikita
• Aug 13, 2015

View media item 291622
Yes he's very fluffy

 

[troub95]

My Ruby is a bit like this and my vet started calling her a Torbie (tabby-tortoiseshell)

 

[mollyblue]

Interesting question, and I will be reading answers too... our stray calico cat had a kitten I am guessing would also be called a Torbie.  My question is that if a cat witih three colors is called a calico, and like your cat above has orange, white, brown/gray and black,  is a Torbie like a male version of the calico?  I know male traditional calicos are rare, and generally sterile when they are born... are multicolored Torbies sterile?  do they have a low sperm count?  Not that I want to breed him... we are getting him fixed before we rehome him...  just one of those things I was thinking bout.

 

[troub95]

I don't think I would say it is a male version of the calico for 2 reasons. 1. There are male calicos, although as you stated, very rare. 2. The coat on Chikita's baby is not a calico's coat but rather a tabby's coat with more than 2 or 3 colors.

I do wonder if Google has been asked this question before regarding this mash-up of calico/tabby/torties. I think I am about to do some research!

My Ruby - It's very hard to see in the pictures but she has two shades of brown as well as black, gray, white and orange in her coat. The orange is third dominate in her coat following brown and black.

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• troub95
• Aug 14, 2015

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• troub95
• Aug 14, 2015

 

[peterbald love]

looks like a Mackerel Tabby!

 

[kat hamlin]

Either broken mackerel or spotted tabby.  Hard to tell without a good view of his sides.

He is a brown tabby--the grey or blue you see is the result of silvering tips of the hairs.  I have a foster boy who has a similar silvery tipping and it's very handsome.

People frequently describe brown tabbies as being greyish, but they're not.  And, to further confuse the issues, brown tabbies aren't actually brown--they're genetically black with a high red factor that makes the coat look brownish.  Truly brown cats are very rare.

Blue (the grey color) is the dilute of black.

The orangish hues in his coat are not, in my opinion, indicative of actual red patches (which would make him a very rare male torbie).  I think they're just lighter places where the reddening factor in the brown is coming out.

In a torbie (a cat which is a brown tabby with red tabby patches mixed in) the orange bits can be distinguished as patches because they are rarely symmetrical.  You can see on Ruby a funny sort of diagonal stripe of orange going down her thigh.  Some torbies are better mixed than others as far as colors, just like some tortoiseshells have more clearly distinct patches than others.  From what I can see on the boy in the first picture,  he doesn't look like a torbie.

Fun fact: male torties, calicos, and torbies are rare and almost always sterile, because they have three sex chromosomes--XXY (Klinefelter's Syndrome).  Normal mammals have two sex chromosomes and are either female (XX) or male (XY) with the Y chromosome being much smaller than the X.  Y is a little over half of an X--so there isn't room on that chromosome for some of the color genes.  Red and black color genes are located at the same place on the gene, and they only appear on the X, not on the Y.  Thus, for a male cat to be both red and black, he must have two X chromosomes.  To develop male characteristics such as male genitalia, he must have one Y (theoretically he could have more than one Y but that would be even rarer and by the time you get 4 sex chromosomes in a fetus it is a lot less likely to be viable), and therefore is an XXY male.

 

[moonlitekittens]

Beautiful cat! To me looks like brown mackereled tabby and white. 

 

[chikita]

Thank you so much for you replies!

I never thought that he could be a torbie but I've seen many tabby cats who seem to have 3 colors(not counting the white and blue(as it's genetically black) markings. I know that male tricolor cats are rare and mostly sterile. I don't know if that applies to him but as far as I can remember (more than 8 years ago lol) his brothers looked very much like him with the only difference being the tabby pattern and the markings. I can't remember very well how his mother looked like(I think she was a grey tabby) but in his litter were no red or tricolor cats so I think Brown Tabby is the right color.

Here is a picture from the side:

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• chikita
• Aug 13, 2015

And a baby picture

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• chikita
• Aug 13, 2015

cute big ears [emoji]9829[/emoji]

I think it's mackeral tabby right?

 

[bonepicker]

image.jpg

• bonepicker
• Aug 14, 2015

my Miss Purdy is a brown mackerel tabby!

 

[peterbald love]

Kiki is a grey Mackerel Tabby!

 

 

[biancavd]

Your beautiful boy is a 'Black Tabby Mackerel with White'. You can also describe him as 'Brown Tabby Mackerel with White'. The reddish color does happen more often in tabby cats and should not be confused with tortie; tortie means a cat wears both the black and red gene (the basic colors) and also shows both colors in patches. What you see on your cat is red goes in-between the black tabby markings, and thus is not considered tortie.