Copyright Rijana
Cat genetics in a simple way
Genetics, the study of heredity, is a subject that many people struggle with. All those colors, all those markings, dominant, recessive,
sometimes visible, sometimes not.......
We may have heard of Mendel's law. Mendel's law describes genetic inheritance. Genetics works according to fixed rules.
One of those rules is that cats all have the same number of gene pairs. So of all genes he has two. You also call these two same genes alleles.
If you see a cat, you see half of his or her genes. But under the coat is that other half, and you don't see it. But they are at least as important as the genes you do see!
What is tabby, and what is agouti? How can a solid colored cat still carry tabby? And how do you know what a white cat carries?
And why are tortoiseshell cats actually always females (with few exceptions)?
What is recessive and dominant? A jumble of terms. Yet it's actually not difficult at all. Let's take a closer look at our cats' coat.
Try to imagine a cat as a paper doll. We will dress him piece by piece in different genetic clothing items. Every cat has a wardrobe at its disposal.
In that wardrobe there is space for all different kinds of clothing items.
Of all kinds of clothing items there are shelves, and on those shelves there is room for two piles of clothes of each kind.
Are you still following?
Now consider that all cats wear all the same kind of clothing items. Really every cat wears a little shirt and a sweater.
Some cats also wear a little cardigan over it, or have a little scarf around and socks and gloves on. And then there are also cats that over all te clothes have also put on an overall. Let's take a look at what can be in a cat's wardrobe, and let's take a good look at those clothing items.
Girls' and boys' wardrobes.
When kittens are born, they get some clothing items from both parents. Of course girls deal with clothing very differently than boys. Girls have their own taste.
They take some clothing from father and some clothing from mother, and start combining themselves. If a girl is born, you look at the sweater color of father and mother, a combination of that you put on the girl.
That's why tortoiseshell girls have a little sweater sewn together consisting of the red sweater of father and the black sweater of mother, or vice versa.
Boys are not so fashion-
Is there a difference in the wardrobe of a female and a male cat? Yes. A girl has more clothes than a boy. That's because a girl has two X-
There is no hook on the Y-
Since a tomcat has only 1 clothes hook, he cannot wear a red and a black sweater at the same time.
A female has two hangers, so she can wear a tortoiseshell sweater. Some tomcats are a bit effeminate. They would like to have a tortoiseshell sweater.
They have bent their Y-
You only see that one sweater that your cat wears, with its more or less visible little shirt, with possibly a cardigan or a scarf. But he has more hanging in the closet. However, he does not show you these clothes. You only get to see these clothes when your cat gives some of these clothing items to his children.
You can assume that darling cat will always wear the dominant clothing item, that is fashionable. What is out of fashion and therefore hangs in the closet is the recessive set, or
perhaps a second dominant set.
Dominance: what do we wear and what do we leave hanging in the closet.
It is quite difficult for a cat to determine what it will put on. Which clothing item will he choose? Some clothing items are dominant, i.e. are always worn. Other clothing items just remain in the closet, without us seeing them. We call this recessive. Only when there is no other choice does the cat choose the recessive set. Sometimes the cat has no choice. The clothes are all a bit out of fashion. Because he has nothing better, he just puts on his recessive clothes. If he had something better and more dominant to put on, he really would not be seen in this. He would at most give it to his children. So you don't always get to know what can be found in the cat's wardrobe.
The contents of the wardrobe; i.e. the genetic code.
We want to know what the cat has hanging in the closet. That is, after all, his genetic code. We write this code as follows: AaBbCcDdIiSsTtbWwXOXo for a female, AaBbCcDdIiSsTtbWwXOY for a male.
Whether to write capital or small letters of course depends on what the cat has hanging in the closet. Shirt: T, Ta, tb We start with the little shirt. All cats wear a little shirt.
Some cats are proud of it, and show their little shirt. Others are a bit ashamed of it, and hide it. The little shirt is a cheerful piece of fabric, with a nice pattern on it.
We call this the tabby pattern. This pattern does vary. We have a marbled or blotched little shirt, a striped or mackerel, a spotted and a little shirt with a different color on each fiber, i.e. a ticked little shirt.
The blotched little shirts usually remain in the closet, cats only wear them when they have no other little shirts. They find the other patterns much more beautiful.
So if they have a choice of a striped and a marbled little shirt, they always put on the striped one.
If they have nothing but marbled little shirts, they can't do much else but wear these little shirts.
Very occasionally there are ticked little shirts in circulation. They find those the most beautiful of all, so if they have them in the closet, they always wear them! And the difference between mackerel and spotted they don't really see, so they wear both of those little shirts when they don't have a ticked shirt in the closet.
Sweater: A or a with the colors n,a,d,e,f,g etc.
Of course every cat wears a sweater over his little shirt. The more moderate cats neatly wear a non-
We call this a non-
We call this an Agouti or tabby sweater. This sweater can of course have all the colors you see in a cat. Black, blue, red, cream, black/red, blue/cream, chocolate, lilac, cinnamon, fawn, there is everything. After all, cats are also fashion-
The black then becomes blue, the red cream, the tortoiseshell becomes blue-
A cat can therefore have DD, Dd or dd lying in the closet. Now there are also different models of sweaters. European cats wear sweater model C.
That is a fully colored little model.
Siamese cats wear a different model, we call that model cs. This little model only has some color at the ends of the sweater. The rest of the clothing is actually completely colorless, but woven so densely that you can't see anything shimmering through. And then there are a few other little models, which we call cb and ca.
Norwegian Forest Cats should not walk around in these sweaters. Here again preference applies. A cat prefers to walk in model C, but if there is nothing else, then it has to make do with cs, cb and ca. Also pay attention to the material of the sweater. Long-
If a cat only has long-
Cardigan: I or i.
Some cats find a simple sweater not enough. They make it a twin set by wearing a silver cardigan over it.
Cats with the solid sweater wear a smoke cardigan, cats with the transparent tabby sweater wear a silver cardigan. The color of their sweater is somewhat softened by it.
For example, you see cats with a blue smoke ensemble, or cats with a red silver tabby outfit.
Here too: if you have a cardigan (I), you put it on. If you don't have it (i), you can't put it on.
Scarves, socks and gloves: S or s.
To finish the whole thing off we put a nice white little scarf on some cats, or they put on socks and little gloves, or they just put a white
accessory somewhere on their sweater. That gives some difference; with white (S) or without white (s). What is so funny is that with cats with the completely white sweater it is not even visible whether they also have a white little scarf on.
The white overall: W.
Now there are cats that don't want to show at all what they have hanging in the closet, or even what kind of clothes they wear all day. So they pull over that little shirt,
that sweater, that cardigan and those scarves, socks and gloves, a very large white overall (W), which completely covers all the clothes. With very young kittens a little
color sometimes peeks out of the overall, we call that a head spot. But as they get older, they get the buttons of the overall closed better and
that last bit of color also disappears. With these cats many people go wrong, they think that nothing at all is worn under the overall. Forget it. Everything is
just underneath, but you don't see it. If cats don't have an overall, space is still kept free in the closet. That empty space is then w.
What is for sale in the fashion shop for cats?
Dominant tabby shirts Ta = ticked T = mackerel Tsp = spottedTop
Recessive tabby shirts tb = blotched
Dominant sweaters A = agouti
Recessive sweaters a = non-
Dominant undiluted colors n = black d = red f = black/red (tortie)
Recessive undiluted colors b = chocolate (chocolate) h = choc tortoiseshell (choc tortie) o = cinnamon (cinnamon) q = cinnamon tortie
Recessive diluted colors: a = blue e = cream g = blue/cream (blue-
Only available in models C, cb, cs, ca and c! Dominant cardigans. I = silver for tabby, smoke for non-
Recessive cardigans. i = no silver or smoke
Dominant socks and scarves. S = white
Recessive socks and scarves. s = no white
Dominant overalls. W = white
Dominant overalls w = no white
OK. So this was an explanation about the cat's wardrobe. Let's now see if we can put what we have learned into practice.
A tortoiseshell with white female:
She wears a little shirt, and has one lying in the closet. We don't see that little shirt. We note in the place for the tabby pattern: -
This sweater shows no tabby pattern and is therefore a or non-
Since this is a recessive gene, which she only wears when there is no Agouti in the closet, we note here aa. We see no point model (c), but don't know if that
might still be in the closet. We note here C-
D-
so o. No silver cardigan is worn, and we then also know that there is no silver cardigan hanging in the closet. So that is ii. She has white, so S-
white overall, so ww. So this female has as genetic code aaB-
A blue silver tabby blotched male:
He wears a blotched little shirt. We have seen that cats only wear a blotched (recessive) little shirt when they have nothing else lying in the closet. So we note the tabby
as tbtb. Mister is normally fully colored, so C-
The tomcat is blue. Blue is such a faded color (diluted color of black) that you only wear it when there is no better colored sweater. So: dd. There is a silver cardigan, but we don't know how many he has in the closet. So I-
He is blue, that is not red, and so we note XoY. The genetic code of this gentleman is A-
If we do that, we are busy describing the genotype, i.e. the complete wardrobe. On the other hand, by looking closely at the kitten, you can discover what her
parents have hidden from us so far in their wardrobe. By looking at the kittens, you thus discover the genotype of the parents.
So the kitten is blue-
Let's first write down what we see, and again put a dash where we are not sure. We'll look at that later. The kitten is tabby, so we see agouti.
That is A-
She is blue, wears her discolored outfit because she has nothing else, so she is dd. We see no silver. So: ii. She has white spots, so S-
We see all those colors, so there is no white overall, so ww. And finally the clothes hangers. Two x-
We note that as XOXo. The genetic notation for this kitten at this moment is therefore A-
That is: what else is hidden in the closet? Remember that she got her clothes from both father and mother. If you look at the shelf in mother's closet where the sweaters lie, you see that mother for agouti had only aa lying in the closet. So she can also only have given away an a-
And as long as we don't know for sure, we always write a dash.
The kitten is blue-
This means that she has not been given anything else. Father is blue himself, that explains the one d. The other one has therefore been from mother. Ha, that means we know something about mother again. Mother, that tortoiseshell female, therefore has a D-
The kitten is with white, father was not. So the kitten has received s from father, and we now note Ss for her. And finally her tabby little shirt. She is striped. But
father only had blotched little shirts to distribute. So we know that the kitten is Ttb! Now that we know a bit more about the contents of her wardrobe, we can also fill in her
genetic code a bit further. We had A-
Color genetics is actually not that difficult at all. If you just reason through all the parts of the code one by one, it turns out that every cat keeps a very logical order.
And as long as you realize that all cats therefore in fact have the same clothing items lying or hanging in the closet, you can gradually build up that whole genetic code.
Just try it on your own cats, it really works!
Sense of touch
The sense of touch seems to be one of the least important senses of the cat. Yet it is the sense of touch that provides a perception of the immediate environment that can be
of vital importance and which of course also warns against injury. Special nerve endings (receptor cells) that react to various stimuli are located everywhere in the
skin. When they are stimulated, they send signals via the nerves connected to them, extremely quickly via the spinal cord to the sensory centers in the brain.
The hairless skin of the nose and the paw pads is particularly sensitive. The nose and the mask of the cat react strongly to touch, heat and cold; the cat
examines both the temperature and the smell of the food.
The sensitive spots of the cat
Touch-
nature, dimensions, shape and distance of unknown objects. Often the cat sticks out one paw to tap gently on something. Then the object is touched a bit more firmly and finally the nose is used for a closer examination.
The paw pads also transmit information that helps the cat keep its balance, by constantly transmitting signals while walking.
The pads are even sensitive to vibrations and thus enable the cat to "hear" with the paws. It is almost certain that this sensitivity is the reason why many cats dislike having their paw pads stroked.
The hair follicles -
The tactile hairs of cats that grow next to the lips can be moved. The neutral position is at a right angle to the head.
The hairs are usually just as long as the thickest part of the body. In this way they can assess whether they can pass through a thin tube.
When checking the food, the hairs are bent forward and the prey is touched carefully. If the cat wants to sniff the food, the hairs are laid along the cheeks.
This virtually disables the tactile hairs and the cat can concentrate on the aroma that stimulates the nose.
The whiskers themselves contain no nerves, but they sit in a root that consists of 2 layers. Between these 2 layers there is a kind of little tube that is filled with blood.
This is called the blood sinus. If a tactile hair touches something, the little tube bends and the blood in the blood sinus moves. The little tube is provided with nerves that pass the information to the brain immediately after touch.
During the first weeks of the kittens' lives, the kittens' whiskers are often shortened by the mother to prevent the young from becoming independent too quickly.
The loss of the tactile/whiskers can cause uncertainty in the cat's movements, because they serve as a tactile organ.
This uncertainty should not be confused with losing balance, because that is not the case. The tactile/whiskers may also be sensitive to air currents and thus enable the cat to not bump into anything in complete darkness.
The tactile/whiskers also serve as extra eyelashes. Any potentially dangerous object first touches the whiskers before it comes near the eyes. As a reaction the eyes are closed. A curious cat will often point the whiskers forward. A cat that assumes a defensive posture pulls the whiskers backwards against the face.
The skin in the space between the hairs is densely covered with tactile organs. They form small bumps in the skin (7 to 25 per cm2) and react to the slightest pressure.Top
