Brown patched tabby vs. Ticked tabby

GoldyCat

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When Goldy first had her kittens several TCS members told me both little girls are brown patched tabbies. As she grows, Iris is looking more and more like some pictures of ticked tabbies that I've seen. Is it possible for her to be both, or is ticked tabby a completely separate category?

It's hard to get a good picture of her because she rarely stays still long enough for me to focus the camera. These are the best I have that show her color patterns.
 

abymummy

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IMO Brown Patch tabby. Mackeral markings are clear and obvious. For a ticked tabby, you need less bandings (think Abyssinian or Singapuras). And, there's obvious patches of red!
 
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GoldyCat

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It's funny, the mackerel stripes show up in the photos where I can't actually see them in person. I was just wondering if the two were mutually exclusive or if she could be a combination of both.
 

goldenkitty45

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Its possible that she's "incomplete" - one parent mackeral, one parent ticked. I think I just recent read about the dominace of the Ticked, Mackeral, Classic patterns.

Mackeral is dominate over the Classic and Ticked is dominate over the Mackeral.
 
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GoldyCat

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Goldy (mother) is a red mackerel tabby. Don't know about the father. One possibility is a gorgeous brown tabby I've seen around occasionally. He is a mackerel as well.

Lion is a red tabby, with more classic markings than mackerel. Of the two girls, Cali is more obviously mackerel and has more red patches than Iris.

Iris on the left, Cali on the right (again Iris' stripes show up more in the photo)


Goldy & Lion
 

goldenkitty45

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With the girls being brown patched tabbies, their father is the brown tabby. The boy gets his gorgeous color from mom


I think classic is recessive - both parents must have it somewhere in the background for it to show up. My tortie rex produced ONE classic red tabby - we traced by the sire's pedigree and found the classic tabby there (he was a mackeral tabby).
 

siggav

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The way I understand it as well, mackarel vs. classic vs ticked tabby is a matter of pattern. While patched tabby is a colour.

I.e patched means that there's a "patchwork" of red and brown (or cream and grey if the cat is dilute). It's basically a tortie or a calico cat where the black patches are brown tabby instead of solid black.

So with that you could get a classic patterned patched tabby cat or a macarel patterned patched cat.

I.e being ticked tabby or patched tabby isn't really mutually exclusive.

Iris looks very ticked to me. She's not as smoothly ticked with the very little banding you'll find on the purebred ticked tabby cats like abys and singapuras but over there you've had breeders focusing on improving the ticking for generations so it's a very 'polished' version of the pattern.

I think there's probably a spectrum between macarel tabby and ticked tabby where the ticking becomes more and more overwhelming until all the stripes are gone. Iris is quite far along towards the full ticking but she's not all the way into purebred aby style ticking.

Anyway the kittens are all gorgeous! and I love the rich red Lion has inherited from his mum. The girls look adorable too. Cali has really well defined stripes on her front legs, in the photo anyway.
 

goldenkitty45

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True, there are 4 kinds of tabby, classic, mackeral, spotted, and ticked. And unless you are breeding for a certain pattern to be consistant, you probably have a lot of blending (especially in the mac, spotted, ticked ones).

Even in the Ocicat, seems like if you get too much of the aby influence too close, it will blend/fade the spotting on the cats as they get older as the ticking comes in more and more. For Oci's the spots are on the surface of the fur.
 

siggav

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Yeah, ticking shows up in most of the spotted breeds I think.

I know with bengals they don't want it, but it's there anyway athough less ticking with clearer and clearer coats is being worked on to get the maximum contrast between the ground colour and the spots.
 

sol

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A tough case... a cat heterozygous for ticked tabby almost always show some degree of "ghost markings". Most obvious on the legs and tail (you see this in ticked Oriental Shorthairs since they should be heterozygous for ticked tabby, not homozygous as the Aby).

Without knowing who the father is it's very hard to say. I'd be tempted to say tortie mackeral tabby, but if the patterns on the body disappear completely as she grows older I'd say she's a tortie ticked tabby.

When it comes to patched tabby, my understanding is that it's a name for all tortie tabbies just as torbie. Am I wrong? If I'm right, patched tabby is the correct term no matter if she's ticked or mackeral tabby since she for sure is some kind of tabby.
 
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GoldyCat

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Thanks for all the replies. I was really just wanting to satisfy my own curiosity. I have a feeling most of the people around here wouldn't have a clue if I described her as "ticked". She's still a very pretty kitten (in my unbiased opinion
) no matter how you label her.
 
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