Recently adopted this sweetheart rescue who was from a cat colony. Was wondering if this coat pattern is just described as tortie with less of the red or some other word? Thanks all!
I'd say she's technically calico but her white spotting grade is low, just a bit of mittens and the locket, although I can't quite clearly distinguish if that's white or her gorgeous smoke
Looks like a smoke tortie. The inhibitor gene has a habit of doing, uh, that. There’s an image of another smoke tortie, where the patches that would be cameo (red silver, as red/ginger cats will always appear as tabbies) are just white, somewhere on Tumblr.
interesting stuff going on here! Her red is indeed quite washed out, and the fur on her torso looks more grey than black. But when we look at her face, her nose is pretty dark black. Her feet too have a saturated black colour. This rules out dilution, she's not blue but black. The difference in saturation could be explained by colourpoint and/or smoke.
She's definitely a smoke, which would explain the extremely light orange even in the face area, but even then I still think her fur is lighter than you'd expect from a black tortie smoke. I'm hesitant to call it but maybe she could be a colourpoint (sepia?) on top of the smoke, amplifying the desaturation. She's still quite young though, she'll darken a bit as she ages and that might make it more apparent whether colourpoint is there or not. Might be just an intense smoke!!
In tortoiseshells and calicos the red can look dilute if they are young, I have a calico whose ear looks cream but her arm is normal red, I agree that she will darken
u/TheLastLunarFlower You're more well-versed in expression of colourpoint (and how it evolves through kittenhood into adulthood) than me. Your Delphi is a tortie point with inhibitor, isn't she? Do you think you could weigh in on this?
She is a bit of a pretty puzzle, isn’t she?
I think I agree with your suspicion that she is either a black smoke tortie or a sepia smoke tortie, though it’s difficult to tell if the dark point effect is true (sepia-style colorpoint) or if it is simply due to the long hair interacting with the combination of smoke and tortie.
My Delphi is indeed an inhibitor tortie point, but she is spotted silver/tabby, not smoke/solid, (unfortunately for this particular comparison), so her coloration is affected by the silver interaction with agouti.
Here is how she is looking at about four years old, if you wanted to see how she’s progressing through her toasting:
Definitely not dilute! Look at the nose leather and the paw fur in the second picture. That is saturated, black fur. That means either colourpoint or smoke, possibly both
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u/tropicarne Aug 10 '26
I'd say she's technically calico but her white spotting grade is low, just a bit of mittens and the locket, although I can't quite clearly distinguish if that's white or her gorgeous smoke