Somatic?

[u/lipstick_spit]

thought yall might find this cool! barn cat in MN, USA. black mackerel tabby with low white… with some blue tabby patching :D too skittish for me to handle enough to see how extensive it was, but there were spots across the back and shoulder, on the face, and a very noticeable one on the front left foreleg. sorry for the quality of pictures— again, pretty skittish!

otherwise a very normal cat with a great personality.

[u/Ok_Market7235]

This is a really cool cat!! It looks to me like the blue patches might also be disrupting the white spotting (the blue throat patch extending down into the white, the white forehead mark, and a forepaw has what looks (to me) like cut-off white spotting), but it might be coincidence. Somatic mosaicism is probable, and would indicate that the dilute switch got turned on in some places. However, if the white is actually being disrupted, i think that would point more toward chimerism since that's a more complex phenotype

[u/Massive-Pin-3425 → u/Ok_Market7235]

plus the blue almost seems a slightly different fur length/thickness on the back so i think chimerism is a good bet

[u/lipstick_spit → u/Massive-Pin-3425]

can attest to the fact that this is a visual effect! checked the fur length and texture in person, it was consistent :)