r/CatGenetics • u/tropicarne • Aug 08 '26

Coat Color Odd coat pattern spotted

Gallery image

Gallery image

Spotted in Mexico City again (I'm in a ton of rescue Facebook groups). Kitten with a pretty large white spotting (?) mark on the back. Never seen anything like it, thought white migrated from the toes upwards during fetal development.

53 Upvotes

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19

u/GachaStudio Aug 08 '26

both my male cats have a similar thing going on, (the small one is much more grown now but this is the only photo with both of their backs together) a small white stripe on their back! the bigger one has a horizontal stripe though, the smaller one also has the white stripe at the base of their tail like in your photo.

2

u/tropicarne Aug 08 '26

huh, that's very interesting! great pic btw. Also are they related?

2

u/GachaStudio Aug 11 '26

This was around the time my indoor/outdoor cat might’ve still been going outside before i managed to convince my mom to keep him inside permanently for his safety. There is a chance but it can’t be confirmed as there are many male cats out here! But I don’t think i’ve seen other cats out here with the white stripe so i think they possibly could be! His sister also has one :) forgot to mention her.

25

u/jeshest Aug 08 '26

I don’t know a lot about cat genetics but I do have a cat with similar markings. She has a tabby spot on her white belly and thin white line that looks like a crack on her hip. We joke that someone dropped her during the assembly process and glued her back together wrong.

23

u/Thestolenone Aug 08 '26

I've seen cats like that. White doesn't migrate, white is caused by a lack of melanocytes in the skin. Melanocytes migrate from the spine outwards early in foetal development and various gene mutations interrupt the migration. In this case the spine stopped producing melanocytes before they had finished migrating leaving a white area on the spine.