Purrs In Our Hearts - Cat Forum UK
Cat General => General Cat Chat => Topic started by: Telstar on January 01, 2007, 19:03:53 PM
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In the middle of November I took on a little kitten, a very thin and wild little waif. He was mostly black, with slightly 'rusty' coloured bits. He's come on in leaps and bounds with good food, worming and lots of fuss, but he now seems to be changing colour!
He had a few white hairs on his chest as many cats do, but these white hairs are now appearing all over! He's taken on a sort of 'salt and pepper' look (rather like myself, under the hair dye!). The greatest concentration of white hairs are at the base of his tail and under his tummy, but they're even appearing on the top of his head now!
I don't recall ever seeing a cat this colour. Is his hair turing white at the shock of ending up living with a pair of loons like me and my other half?
Anyone seen this before?
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Ummmmmmmmm are you sure its a he? It sounds from yourdescription that its a tortie and thery are all shes ;D
Do you have a picture so we can all give our veiws :rofl:
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Gill, the rusty coloured bits could just be cos the cat was a stray and in poor condition. Maybe a pic to see what we think - but it isn't that uncommon for blacks (and black and whites) to acquire more white hairs.
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Ummmmmmmmm are you sure its a he? It sounds from yourdescription that its a tortie and thery are all shes ;D
Do you have a picture so we can all give our veiws :rofl:
Thats strange, when my mate had a kitten from my ex it was a Tortie, but after a trip to the vets, she turned out to be a he :scared:
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Yes, I can quite believe this our second cat Squeaky was a black semi- long haired kitten, after about 8mths we were painting and a flash of white on one side of his mouth made us think he'd got white paint on at first glance obviously not close up, but over a month it became very white (if I can find some pics I'll scan them to show you) so our all black kitten ended up with half a white tash!!!!
I've also seen differences in texture and colour of cats with environmental changes ie from outdoor to indoor cat.
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I actually missed Gill's comment about all torties being female - that isn't true, the majority of torties are female (I can't remember the stats off hand), but you can get male torties, and very rarely, you can get fertile male torties, but they only give out the gene for either red or black, not both like females.
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Thats interesting Desley because I thought a discussion on CC had decided that torties were never male and nobody had actually seen a male tortie.
However I would love to see one and also pictures of the kitten changing color ;D
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I've never seen a male tortie either but they do exist - just very rare and due to a genetic abnormality (having 3 sex chromosomes - XXY - instead of the usual 2 - XY)
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My black changes to almost ginger in the summer, obviously it's the sun on his fur. As your cat is still a kitten could this just be new marking's coming out?
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When my Baz was a kitten he was black with white patches, then between the ages of about 3 and 7 months he started sprouting little white hairs amongst his black colouring and we could not work out what colour he was going to be, then the white hairs disappeared again and he is now a normal (but very handsome) black and white. It just seemed to be a stage he was going through so maybe your kitty is doing the same. I will try and dig out some of the piccies of Baz before and after his white "ticking" stage.
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No Gill, there can be male torties, and I do remember posting on that thread - there are two ways you can get male torties, but the majority are sterile, although someone posted on my American forum of a sterile male tortie Rex, but he only throws out one colour, there wasn't a pic of him though (and I doubt you would tell he was male off his pic). I actually did post a link on CC of a website with male torties, will have to try and find it again. Here is the Messybeast link that explains the two ways you can get male torties
http://www.messybeast.com/mosaicism.htm
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Thanks for all your thoughts!
I already have a tortie cat (a girl) and Loris doesn't look anything like that. He's very definately black with a pretty much all over scattering of white hairs. The rusty coloured bits are just confined to the slightly fluffy hair just behind his ears now - as Desley says, I think this was a result of his coat being in a poor state when I got him. He also had some faint tabby stripes on his back legs but these seem to have faded now too.
If I can get a decent picture of him in daylight I'll try to post it on here - I doubt if the white 'ticking' will show up using a flash.
Whilst I'm a black cat fanatic, I won't be disappointed if Loris stays this colour - it's so unusual!
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I can't wait to see a pic of him!!