kittens and genetics

I am so curious as to how our kittens look the way they do. If this is in the wrong place mods, please move it.

My mama cat is black and white. She showed up on our doorstep very early summer. Jesse (mamma cat) took to my daughter and we brought her in. Before I could get her spayed, she went into heat. It was one heat after another and I have heard that one should not spay when the cat is in heat.

While we were waiting for the brief period of not being in heat, my daughter let her out. She was out for around 30 minutes and we caught her mating with a stray tom who was orange..like Morris. That was the only time she got out.

I am interested in learning how Jesse bore the kittens she did. I can understand the calico but the other two puzzle me.

Meatloaf is a short hair with Siamese markings. Baylen is long hair with Siamese markings.

The only cat she has been around that is Siamese is my Boomer. He is 16 and has been neutered years ago.

Any ideas?

Jesse is getting spayed as soon as Aberdeen eats food.

This about the siamese mask is the easiest to explain. I hope someone other will explain the calico-pattern - this is odd.

First.
We do have our genes from ma and from pa. Thus all genes are in pairs, one from each parent.

Second.
The siamese-mask gene is recessive. Ie it is weaker than most other colours. For it to become seen in the cat - both genes in the pair must be siamese-mask.

If it is only one, and the other is any other - the cat individual will have the other colour.
Although the cat will be still a bearer of the siamese mask-gene, and about half of its offspring - will thus also be bearers of the gene.


Such a recessive gene may be "hidden" during many generations, floating there in the genepool quite alone....
But if a cat with one such mask gene in the pair meets another mask-bearer, some of their kittens will get double mask gene AND thus become siamese-masked. Often a siamese-look-alike.
Roughly it will be in a average litter of four: one has double siamese = siamese-alook, two will have one each - bearers, but NOT siamese-look, one will dont have any siamese genes.
The distribution is hovever not always perfect in an individual litter....


There is also at least one another mask-gene; I think it is called of the Burma-type. It behaves similiarly, but is less common than the siamese gene.


One striking example. Once upon a time they incrossed some blue masked siameses into the Russian Blue. But after a short time they avoided the siamese-masked kittens. These went sold as pets and or registered as siameses(!) (the telltale says they were killed sometimes), and their parents were usually not longer used in breeding.

Yet it still happens now and then there are born pure bred russian blue kittens - after perhaps 30 generations! - who are totally look-alike old type siameses....

(And nowadays this is not so avoided as 20 years ago. These kittens are still sold as pets, but their parents may be used in breeding. Although NOT with other known mask-bearers.
The breeders had come to insight: We must chase the genes for difficult genetic diseases. So why make great pains to chase a gene we admittely dont want, but which is in itself entirely harmless to the kitten? These kittens are perfectly sound and healthy (unless they also happen to have some bad genes, but that is an entirely different story)).

Originally Posted by StefanZ

The siamese-mask gene is recessive. Ie it is weaker than most other colours. For it to become seen in the cat - both genes in the pair must be siamese-mask.

Such a recessive gene may be "hidden" during many generations, floating there in the genepool quite alone....
But if a cat with one such mask gene in the pair meets another mask-bearer, some of their kittens will get double mask gene AND thus become siamese-masked. Often a siamese-look-alike.

Click to expand...

Same thing with the longhair gene, it's also recessive.
And the calico: when mommy is black and daddy is red= tortie female, add white and you have a calico. Boys from this mating should be black (or seal points in this case).

Thanks for the replies .

Here is Baylen:

Easy - both parents had to either be pointed or long hair or carrying pointed or longhair recessive genes.

Since both are shorthair (and you are assuming no other cats bred her), then both of them had to be carrying the pointed and long hair genes

Added - don't forget that you can also have blue (grey) as the dilute gene, so the kittens could be seal OR blue points if both were also dilute carriers.