slugswarriorsdesigns

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

This is most likely the end of this blog.

It will stay up. As an archive.

But I haven't been able to draw for months now. It makes me feel so, so, so much worse.

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

I hope this isn't a bother but I really hope you're having a good day<3

This ask is the perfect opportunity for me to update all my followers:

So mentally, I'm doing decent! I'm going back to vet school, I'm taking driving lessons (actually drove home for the first time yesterday!!) and in 2 weeks I have my first appointment at the gender clinic yeehaw (after 6 years of being diagnosed with GD and 3 years on a waiting list)

But my anhedonia has grown extreme. I can't do anything to relax, drawing has been impossible for a few weeks now. I can't play games or anything either, it's like a huge mental block that won't go away. I'm trying but it's just too much. I WANT to draw but I can't.

My physical health has also gone down the drain. I have an undiagnosed disorder that causes me to not be able to digest most foods (only meat and fish). It's progressive but in the last I'd say... 2 months it's rapidly gotten to the point where I can barely eat anything now. The waiting list for diagnostics is also 6 months long. Since my intestines don't digest the food, I'm barely getting any nutrients at all, so my joints are constantly in horrible pain and I'm fatigued 24/7. Eating means pain and nausea for hours now. Again, only fish and meat are still safe, but, not to be extremely political but to be extremely political, v*gan lobbying in my country has raised the prices for animal-based products to extremes so we just can't afford it. And the prices are still rising and won't stop rising until all those lobbyists are kicked out of our government (which sadly isn't happening) so yeah.

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

Detangling the all new CORIN stuff today! This is important enough and long enough that we're getting genetics on main. This is going to be my masterpost until I get an article up on the main site about it.

For those not in the loop, sunshine in Siberian cats has recently been mapped to the CORIN gene, the same one that causes golden tabby tigers. An additional allele, extreme sunshine, has also been identified. And, "copper" phenotype golden British Shorthairs have been identified to have yet another mutation! All of these are recessive to the standard phenotypes.

Color Descriptions

Standard Golden - Found most famously in British Shorthairs, but also present in other breeds. It is a black-based tabby with the background color being golden and the markings being their normal black-based color. It also comes in shaded and tipped varieties, where we get less and less of the residual black-based markings.

Sunshine - Found in Siberians. Looks very similar to golden, but the hair is always pale to the root and they lack the dark nose rim found in most tabbies. Visible difference between those homozygous for agouti (standard sunshine), and those carrying solid (dark sunshine).

Extreme Sunshine - Sunshine with minimal markings, similar to the golden tipped phenotype.

Copper - Found in BSHs. Goes by several other names at this point, but I have consistently used copper so that's what I'm sticking with. It is golden tipped with almost no residual black, and the underside of the cat may become very pale.

Gene Symbols

The researchers have decided to use the symbol wb for CORIN, but I strongly disagree with this. "Wide band" has long been used as the name of the trait causing standard golden and silver shaded and tipped phenotypes, and has been generally accepted to be polygenic for some time. Some people still choose to use Wb for standard golden as though it is incomplete dominant, or else use symbols such as Wb+, Wb++ to track it. Even though CORIN causes "wide banding", it is distinct from the existing concept of the wide band trait.

What gives me the authority to coin a new gene symbol? Well, I've done it before when I needed to (Bengal Modifier is my doing) and people don't seem to mind. I don't expect it to catch on with researchers, but hopefully I can provide a nice alternative for breeders and hobbyists.

G is a nice candidate since it can stand for golden, and it's not currently in use for any cat genes. It was previously used for Birman gloving, but since that has been mapped to KIT, gloving now shares a locus with white spotting and dominant white. It's in my interest to keep any subscripts and superscripts short, since I can't use them in the dropdowns in my calculators and guarantee they'll be readable to everyone. So I want the symbols to be as short and clear in plaintext as possible.

For now, I'm going with G > gsh > ge > gc, corresponding to the currently used sequence WB > wbSIB > wbeSIB > wbBSH. Proper writing of all these is technically subscripts, but I usually end up leaving symbols as plaintext in my writings for readability. The dominance hierarchy of the lower alleles is based only on phenotype, and only exists because I need to have some order for them.

Genotypes

Note that the dash may stand for any lower allele.

G- : No mutation. Still may be standard golden if they have high wide banding polygenes.

gshgsh : Sunshine.

gshge : Intermediate between sunshine and extreme sunshine, as they are confirmed to be codominant.

gege : Extreme sunshine.

gcgc : Copper.

gshgc, gegc : Mystery phenotypes, may never be combined since sunshine and copper are both breed-exclusive as of now. When I add them to the calculator (soon!), I'll simply note them as "sunshine-copper" and "extreme sunshine-copper".

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

are your colourpoint ivypool and dovewing part of your genetically accurate headcanons? if so, can you explain where in your hc they got the colourpoint genes from?

Yes!

Oliver is a white masking golden shaded, carrying point. Princess also carries point. Cloudtail is a golden shaded point. Whitewing is a carrier.

Birchfall is also a carrier through Ferncloud, who got it from Whitestorm. His brother, Spiderleg, is a point.

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

Hi! Some time ago I sent various photos of a tiktok famous cat asking whether you knew if the black mask-like spot it had was due to white spotting or not, did you receive it or did Tumblr lose it?

I've received it! I'm just waiting until I have the time to look more into it before I spread false information

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

would it be possible for a tortie to have a big patch of one color on a certain part of the body and very minimally on the rest of the body? like a black body and then a fully red head

Yes. Cats with barely any patches of the "second" color are called cryptic torties. Sometimes genetics does weird stuff. There have been cases of completely orange tabbies with a single black spot on ONE toe, and when the cat had kittens she did have kittens only a tortie can have.

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

would you mind explaining the difference between blue coats and silver coats? i’m pretty sure they’re not the same but i don’t understand the difference/what exactly causes “silver” coats. sorry if you’ve gone over this before!!

Blue is the result of the dilution allele (d). It is recessive. The dilution gene changes the amount of pigment in every individual hair fiber. Because the pigment cells are more spaced out, the color becomes diluted. So black becomes blue, chocolate becomes lilac, cinnamon becomes fawn and red becomes cream.

Silver is "the" inhibitor gene (I). It is dominant. The inhibitor gene changes where on the individual hair the pigment resides. In the case of silver, it makes the roots of every hair colorless, aka silver. In solid cats this shows as a pale undercoat, while in tabby cats the agouti rings on the hairs become pale. Silver can come in any combination with other colors, so for example a black silver tabby will have a pale "base" coat with black stripes, but blue silver tabbies also exist, and so do red silver tabbies, cream silver tabbies, etc.

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

How would you go about designing a genetically accurate Garfield? Is it even possible for an orange cat to have black stripes?

I've answered this one before!

He's a black golden mackerel tabby British Shorthair. No I won't accept criticism.

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

Will they still look like mackerel or classic or whatever pattern even if they don't have the agouti gene?

Yep, whatever pattern genes they're carrying / would be if they HAD the agouti gene. Spotted, ticked, classic, mackerel, all possible.

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

hi!! i adore your content ;_; sorry to be a bother-

i've been having an argument with someone who has bred "ACTUAL brown cats" all her life (aka havana brown; chocolate cats) and has decided that this here cat (from a video) is "red or dark-orange". i believe it's a cinnamon cat, but i still 100% would consider it 'brown'. thoughts? 😓 i understand calling it reddish-brown, but red..?

That's a cinnamon cat. Cinnamon is a melanin mutation of chocolate, who is a mutation of black. Nothing to do genetically with red. Calling this cat red is wrong

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

I was messing around with a clan generator and they keep mentioning red pseudo tabbies. They'll say classic pseudo or mackerel and I honestly have no idea what a red pseudo tabby is. Do you know what they are?

Red tabbies without the agouti (tabby) gene, since red cats always show the agouti pattern even if they are genetically solid

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

What's your favorite character design you have made?

Dovewing!! Also really happy with her newest kits. But I think making her a blue golden is just... Perfect!!

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

What's your favorite color/pattern/gene/mutation in cats? Sorry for all the /'s I wanted to keep it broad in case you had a favorite in each category!

Blue golden shaded points and tortoiseshell / calico points are my favorites! I like pointed cats a lot lol my favorite breed is Seychellois because of their insane patterning

Favorite non-point is chocolate/cinnamon calicoes, specifically in British Shorthairs

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

Hi there Slug! I've got a question about cat genetics.

Lots of Siamese/pointed cats have been showing up in my area randomly, but they're not purebred. For example, we rescued a diluted calico molly that gave birth to five kittens. Here's a picture of her:

You see the white one nursing and the beige one behind her? Well, they ended up looking like this:

So, my question is: How did two colorpoints (a flame point and a lynx point, if I'm not mistaken!) come out of a diluted calico? We've been told that there may have been multiple different fathers, so whatever was in her was in the kittens, so it might just be as simple as that. But then, how were the fathers pointed if they weren't purebred Siamese?

Thanks for taking the time to read and possibly answer this! I really appreciate it! :)

First, your girl is a torbie, not dilute!

Point is a recessive gene that's present in a lot of feral populations. You have to remember that unlike dog breeds, cat breeds are new. Siamese cats were bred from domestic shorthairs with the pointed trait. But those domestic shorthairs with the trait still exist without being a Siamese. That's how it shows up in populations without any "Siamese" in the gene pool.

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

Have you done myrtlebloom yet?

I need to redo her design but technically she's on here! I just want to make a newer / more accurate / adult version of her.

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

Hello Slug! So I've been a fan of your art for a while now, and I was wondering if I could use your art in my Warriors Wiki OC pages! Except, I would edit your art to match my OC's patterns/coat/etc so I would sort of be using your cats like bases. I know you said that I could use your art for free (with credit) but I just wanted to double-check that it's okay to tamper with your art first, then post it? As I said, your cats are nothing short of adorable and I hope my request made sense!

Hi! Nope, specifically the designs are free to use NOT the art. I don't want it used in icons either (that's why I make my own). Exceptions would be if the cat is directly canonically based on your OC and if it's for like... A video and credit is given, but basically I don't want the art edited for other purposes

[slugswarriorsdesigns]

Heyo you've mentioned that you learnt cat genetics from a book you read a couple times when you've been previously asked how you learnt them - do you remember the name of it? I know bits and pieces of cat genetics but having a book would be really handy. Don't worry if not, just thought I'd ask :]

It has two names in English:

The Encyclopedia of Cats

The Ultimate Guide to Cats

Written by Candida Frith-Macdonald!