The Possibility of Identifying a Genetic Lineage with Way Too Little Information

November 1, 2005 6:14 PM

My cat is a standard tabby. This isn't her, but she looks about like this. When I picked her out, she had one all-black sibling, and one all-gray sibling, all with short hair. I saw her mother flash by at one point, a short-haired calico like this one. Is it possible, with this information, to extrapolate what my cat's father looked like?
posted by interrobang to science & nature (17 comments total)

What sex are your cat's siblings? (just to sort out the alleles)
posted by gaspode at 6:31 PM on November 1, 2005

Boing is a girl, and the black and gray kittens were both male.
posted by interrobang at 6:33 PM on November 1, 2005

Well, what the siblings look like isn't material; a single litter of kittens can have as many different fathers as there are kittens. That said, your cat looks very much like mine. I've been told his tabby coloring & markings are very much dominant. If that's true, perhaps the father is a brown tabby as well.
posted by luriete at 6:39 PM on November 1, 2005

OK, so hopefully I've got this right. I don't know the proper letters for the alleles, but ginger is dominant, black is recessive. The colour is X-linked, so the boys colour is from Mum. So Mum, being a calico is Gb. Sibs are Yb, because they are getting their allele from their Mum. Your kitty could be a faded calico... I believe that silver tabbies sometimes are, but I can't find a ref. If that is the case... you can't tell for certain what the dad is. He's not contributing to the sibs' colouring, and your Boing could have a G or a b from Mum or Dad.

Spectacularly unhelpful. Hrrmmm.

on preview: AND of course, the sibs could have different dads. It's not necessarily the case, though.
posted by gaspode at 6:43 PM on November 1, 2005

I also don't know for sure that Boing had only two siblings; I saw an ad in the newspaper that three kittens were available, and there were three when I got there, out in the country at some lady's house, where all kittens come from.

I don't know if this changes things or not.
posted by interrobang at 6:48 PM on November 1, 2005

My cat is also a little "orangier" than the cat picture I linked to, if that helps.
posted by interrobang at 6:49 PM on November 1, 2005

Why do you need to identify the father, is one of the neighborhood males trying to claim paw-ternity rights?

Googling Cat Fur Genetics reveals this.

Seems you could figure it out from there.
posted by onalark at 7:09 PM on November 1, 2005

Is she a grey tabby with some red markings (a torbie), or a brown tabby throughout?
posted by maudlin at 7:41 PM on November 1, 2005

I found this site that lays out the genetics of cat fur color.

There are four genes involved (Dominant/Recessive):
Agouti (A/a) produces flecked fur that has variations of color along its length.
Black (B/b) produces black in solids, and brown color in agouti.
Dilute (D/d) washes out all colors. Dominant is intense color.
Orange(O/o/Y) produces red color this is sex linked.
Dashes are unknown.

The blue (grey) sibling must be aaB-ddoo or aaB-ddoY. (Not agouti, black pigment diluted, not orange).

The solid black sibling must be something like aaB-D-oo or aaB-D-oY (Not agouti, black pigment full, not orange)

The the mother as a classic calico must be aaB-DdOo. (Not agouti, black pigment, heterozygous for dilute, sex-linked orange). We know that the mother must have the recessive dilute to have a blue offspring.

The classic tabby is A-B-D-oo (Agouti, black pigment, full, not-orange.)

Just from my crosses (and I could be missing something) the only thing I can tell about the father is that he must be a heterozygous tabby Aab-d-oY if either the black or the blue are female. If both are male, he could be orange.

This is assuming that the litter has a single father.

And of course, your mileage may vary, and there is a lot of developmental noise that could affect things. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Etc., etc..

*Insert standard disclaimer about taking advice from someone who earned a Bio degree more than 10 years ago.*
posted by KirkJobSluder at 7:43 PM on November 1, 2005

Duh, I forgot. We know the father had a non-orange female kit, so the father can't be red or cream. Doh!

*Insert disclaimer about posting at the end of the day.*
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:00 PM on November 1, 2005

Is she a grey tabby with some red markings (a torbie), or a brown tabby throughout?

I'm not really sure. I suppose she's probably more of a "torbie", but I've never really heard that term before.

Thanks to everyone who's posted so far. In answer to onalark's question about why I'm asking, it's really just simple curiousity about whether this sort of genealogical genetic tracking is actually possible.
posted by interrobang at 8:02 PM on November 1, 2005

See this National Geographic report about cloning cats, which says that the coat color of a cat is affected by things other than genetics, such as the mother's nutritional state and health during the pregnancy.

Based on this, I'd say you're unlikely to determine the color of your cat's parent - as the report says, the conditions in which your cat was raised cannot be duplicated.
posted by lambchop1 at 8:53 PM on November 1, 2005

interrobang, I only asked so I could insert a lame joke :). In fact, I only posted so that I could insert a lame joke. The googled link was merely an afterthought.
posted by onalark at 9:32 PM on November 1, 2005

Cat coat colour genetics are sooooo complicated. (Basically, what lambchop1 said).
Besides different alleles that all determine colour (there are more than the four mentioned above, those are just the most apparent) female cats also have X-chromosome inactivation going on that makes them patchy (obvious in calicos and tortoiseshells) so if she is not all the way the same colour brownish, there's that too... (scroll down to the tortie tabby on that page)
posted by easternblot at 10:08 PM on November 1, 2005

Your cat's father is a black male.
posted by Radio7 at 11:33 PM on November 1, 2005

ooops, posted too soon.
I read somewhere several years ago, that if you have a cat that is orange or orange-ish, and the mother is calico, the father would be black.
posted by Radio7 at 11:35 PM on November 1, 2005

also, something that no one else has mentioned, is that the colour of the syblings is fairly useless information with regards to the father of your kitten, as it is quite probable that all of the kittens in the litter were each fathered by different males.
posted by ancamp at 4:19 AM on November 2, 2005