Pedigree markings showing up on your Barn cats?

United States
January 12, 2009 9:52am CST
During my life I have had several cats. Most of whom have been barn cats. As a girl I remember the typical colors: Orange tigers, brown tigers, black and white, black, and of course white with black. Now that I have become an adult and have my own farm, the colors have dramatically changed. My crew has the typical brown tiger, gray tiger, black and whites, whites with black, and a few just black. No longer have I seen the orange tiger. But I have seen a beautiful marble patterns in gold and black, gray and black, and marbles with white. I looked for this pattern and found it as a color of the British Shorthair. There is no way my cats born here every year are British line. Also I have had a few that have the distinct markings and characteristics of a Maine Cat (They look to be mixed with raccoon). The have the lengthening of the hair, short at shoulders and gets longer down the body to the tail that is huge and ringed. Long hair around face and tuft at the end of the ears. They sit up on their hind legs sometimes like a raccoon and my indoor cat doesn't meow but chirps and blurts. I know that my cats aren't the only ones marked this way, do you have any cats with odd markings? Do you know why these markings are now showing up, I don't remember any marble cats when I was growing up.
1 response
@Osiris13 (17)
• United States
12 Jan 09
the marble pattern is from a breed called a marbled Bengal, I have an orange one. the marbling in the color is a recessive trait, being that somewhere down the bloodline the genes of a marbled bengal were introduced, and only when another set of this gene in introduced (1 from maternal 1 from paternal) there is a chance of a marbling pattern. Also I have a cat that doesn't meow, it also chirps and almost barks! It is a calico cat maybe a year old. I have asked the vet about the noises and she said that some cats will mimic sounds they hear either in the womb or when first born. this Calico was a stray that I adopted when she was only about 5 weeks old, so there is a chance that the sounds were learned in those 5 weeks.