#like what if a dilute calico and black tortie fused

[amber-tortoiseshell]

hello!! i just found your blog and am absolutely fascinated with cat genetics! i was hoping you might be able to answer a question i have (maybe its for a warrior cats OC who could say....)

is it possible for a cat with a calico type coat pattern to not have any orange patches? like is there a type of cat that exists where instead of the orange its blue/grey so the cat is basically a monotone "calico" (white, grey, black) ?

you have a really amazing blog!! definitely know what i'm scrolling thru for the next few hours :D

Wow, i'm happy to hear it 😸 And warrior cat OCs are more than welcome here...

If I understand correctly, you're asking if it's possible to have a tricolor cat without orange, yeah?

There are of course tabbies, where the agouti background is differently colored than the pattern itself, which can look very patchy on a high-white cat, especially with blotched tabbies:

However this might not be what you're looking for.

Normally a "monocrome calico" isn't possible - torties (including calicos) all have a black-based (black, blue, chocolate, amber ect) and an red-based color (red, cream ect). The dilution level of the different colors have to be the same: you can't mix black (dense) and blue (diluted).

But now to the good news: there are chimeras! A chimera happens when two embryos fuse in the womb. If they have different phenotypes, the resulting cat will look like a patchwork of these colorations. So chimeras can absolutely mix any colors, go wild.

source, source

(I can't guarantee that these cats above are true chimeras. There could be gene malfunctions and somatic mutations at play, but the main point of this to show that such effect is possible, so i think it doesn't really matter now.)

[themissinglynx]

People get torties so wrong so frequently and don’t realize how diverse the pelt color can be.

Yeah. It’s a pelt color. Not a breed.

Shocker.

Oh, and calico tabbies are called calibies (sing caliby).

Also, I heavily simplified the brown tortoiseshell thing. If you want more detail, look that crap up. I’m too tired to explain.

I’m sleeping now.