Learned a few things about Oci's at the show :)

Even tho you own a breed, you always find out something new. This from some of the judges and spectators at the show.

Oci's should NOT have round spots (a lot of them). The proper spotting is a thumb print like spot or smudge. Not spots like an Egyptian Mau. Charlie has the proper Oci spots

Oci spots are created by the pattern of the ticking and banding. The color is concentrated to form a spot - so the spotted pattern should not be down to the skin - like you would have on a mackeral or classic pattern. Charlie's are correct - they are only the the surface of the fur.

And at the end of today, we had a spectator tell us this story of his 'stray/mixed breed'. He has an "early" type of Oci and didn't even know it. His mix was 1/2 aby and 1/2 siamese...........and as the cat got older, it developed a spotted pattern, complete with the spine lines.! The original cross was aby to siamese and back to siamese - and the spotted cat appeared in the litter.

The owner was amazed how his little mixed breed resembled Charlie so much. Wish they had a picture with them. But it must be true that the spots did come from the siamese.

That's really fascinating, particularly so for me because it's somewhat similar to something I learned about Orientals not so long ago.

I'm not so much into the tabbies, but apparently there's no mackerel tabby in the OSH genepool - spotteds are the most popular and classic occurs fairly frequently. Now we all know that mackerel is an accepted pattern, and that there are OSH that are registered and shown as mackerel tabbies - but the pattern isn't due to the MC gene - it's a variation on a combination of elongated spotting and high contrast ticking.

The reason it's relevant? Ticked OSH were introduced by outcrossing to the Aby (as a side effect of the introduction of the Light Brown gene - cinnamon in OSH and what we call Sorrel in the Aby here in the UK).

That is interesting actually. I have a feeling that the agouti-ness of Abys create the spots....?

Not sure - IMO the aby would make more sense to create the spotting as its a form of tabby. But abys never have had spots to my knowledge. However, I have seen the "spotting" on some older siamese in their coats where it does look like spots.

No one is sure - just that recently I have heard or read somewhere that they think its the siamese. Guess we will never know

Originally Posted by GoldenKitty45

Not sure - IMO the aby would make more sense to create the spotting as its a form of tabby. But abys never have had spots to my knowledge. However, I have seen the "spotting" on some older siamese in their coats where it does look like spots.

No one is sure - just that recently I have heard or read somewhere that they think its the siamese. Guess we will never know

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I think that makes sense, in fact I don't see that many older solid-point Siamese these days without ghost markings of some sort (and even some instances of cats having their registration changed to tabby point later in life!), I don't know whether it's my imagination or even nostalgia perhaps, but it seems to me that evenness of point colour has suffered over recent years - but then it's not the easiest thing to selectively breed for either as it's not going to be readily apparent in younger cats.

One judge did mentioned about the coat darkening on the Siamese (especially seals) and said they look for the evenness of the color on the body down the spine/sides. They don't want to see patching. So maybe they do carry the spotting factor.

I think someone in here had a seal or blue point and the body had darkened enough to show "spots" on the body!