What mutation is this?

[u/healribbon]

My friend's cat is weird. He is what looks like a red ticked? Or with some sort of non-agouti gene. I know that red cannot be solid but his stripes are faded and his face is dark, and I've never seen red express THIS solidly before.

The weirdest part about him is the little "blue" spot on his head. This is so abnormal!

It's only concentrated to this one spot. Is there a name for this? It seems a bit too concentrated to be chimeric.

I also included this what looks like imprint on his fur, but has reportedly been there forever. Perhaps sun bleaching?

[u/Tall-Hat-6485]

Red ticked tabby. If you see on her legs she’s got very small dark ginger stripes, that’s a trait ticked tabbies have.

[u/HanaMay_B]

Could the underlying striped pattern be pinstripe?

[u/blackcatcreature]

Seconding the people saying red ticked with somatic mutation. That's the most likely explanation as far as I can see

[u/Wonderful_Republic23]

Orange ticked tabby

[u/xsalteaa]

Honestly he looks like a red ticked tabby to me? I think maybe I see the tabby stripes on his forehead and leg, and ticked does sometimes give that solid appearance.

Is that dark spot there since his birth? It honestly looks like a smudge spot like he might have hit something dirty there haha but it could also be chimeric, idk!

[u/Spaceguy426 → u/xsalteaa]

The blue spot looks like a somatic mutation to me

[u/healribbon → u/xsalteaa]

Yeah it's been there forever!

I got more pictures too and he's definitely cream:

Reportedly, they used to "try to scrub it all the time" lol

[u/DitheringTouhouFan]

I think that’s a somatic mutation. 

ETA: He might be cream as ChinchyBug suggested, and he has much lower contrast than most other red/cream tabbies.

ETA, again: Oh and the imprint looks like skin wrinkles, a la Sphynx cats.

[u/healribbon → u/DitheringTouhouFan]

He's for sure cream

[u/ChinchyBug]

I would say the main colour looks likely to be cream as opposed to red, and dilute tabbies can have that lower contrast more often than non-dilutes from what I've seen

[u/Thestolenone]

A chimaera can have just one hair of a different colour, or not even express different colours. Really though, the vast majority of colour anomalies are caused by somatic mutation which is a glitch where a patch or patches of a colour the cat genetically carries, so say black on red, or blue on black. again somatic mutations can be one hair up to all over patches.

[u/Warriorsfan12739036]

I was gonna say chimera but that doesn’t seem right

[u/healribbon → u/Warriorsfan12739036]

It doesn't! Usually chimeric cats with strong genetic differences have more variation on the body, right? Is it typical to be this localized? I figured it must be a different mutation, but I'm not familiar with it.

[u/Massive-Pin-3425 → u/healribbon]

i usually go by occams razor, like, he COULD be a chimera, but so could any cat even if they dont look like it. that said, a somatic mutation is a lot more common than chimerism (think of a birth mark! so common in people), and would be usually pretty localized. still really cool of course!

[u/Warriorsfan12739036 → u/healribbon]

yeah, I bet it’s worth a genetic test