Whenever I make a new character for my story or a new OC like Starstrike, I wonder if I am making the cat’s fur realistic.
I wanted to know if the fur patterns between the mother, father, and children were correct, so I decided to try and find out!
I researched which fur patterns are more dominant (meaning that the cat only needs to inherit it from one parent for it to be displayed), and what some of the genes are called, and in this PDF (see below) I’ve written everything I’ve learnt in an easy-to-read format with sections and some bold text.
I’m still learning more, but I hope this will help you if you’ve ever wondered. And hey, don’t be scared off by the huge words, even I had to copy-paste them into the PDF- no way I was trying to spell “heterozygous”!!
Here’s a summary of what I’ve learned:
If a cat’s genetics are (for example) b/b A/A T/T D/d O/O S/S w/w…
b/b means that the cat’s actual fur colour is chocolate, A/A means that it has agouti (banded) hairs, and T/T means that it has a mackerel (striped) tabby pattern.
D/d means that the fur colour is not diluted, but dense.
The O/O means that orange will cover the recessive chocolate gene, and the S/S means that more than half the cat’s body is covered by white spotting.
(Fun fact: black-and-white cats are actually black with white spots, not white with black spots.)
w/w means that the cat isn’t white (white is a ‘masking’ colour, meaning no matter what other colours there are, white will cover them if the gene contains even only one W allele).
Wow this is interesting! So, is a white cat covered in white spots, or is it a white base??