Power of Recessive Genes!
Our dear sweet Honey gave birth to five beautiful kittens the other night. It can take me a while to finalize these blog posts, so by the time you’re reading this the kittens will already be a few weeks old. :)
The warm color makes it hard to tell.. and this is right after labor, so they’re still a little damp too.
The colors of these kittens surprised me — though, this was partially my fault. I forget that Honey is BY11, and not NY11 (the difference is just barely there) and I forget that both her and that father, Katsu (who is NY11), carry a dilution gene. It can be tough keeping track, especially since it was their first litter together. I expected all 5 of the kittens to come out a dark, shaded golden color, similar to their mother and father. Recessive genes really came into play with this litter!
Take a look at their genetic traits here:
Honey on the left, Katsu on the right.
And take a look at the five kittens:
Just barely 24 hours old.
Ginger, Giselle, and Graham appeared to have taken on the recessive dilution gene, so they are all either Blue Golden Shaded or Lilac Golden Shaded. Gale is dark and spotted, so I believe he is a Black Golden Spotted. Griffin is pure gold, so I believe he is Black Golden Shaded.
Now if you’re not quite familiar with these terms, this might sound really confusing! “What do you mean black? None of these kittens look black.. or blue.. or lilac?!”
Let’s do a little bit of a deep dive into this.
Why are they called Black/Blue/Lilac Golden?
The naming convention standard is relatively easy to understand, actually!
Base Color:
What the cat actually genetically is! This color will actually very rarely show up in the cats except in paw pads, nose tip, and around the eyes. Black Golden Shaded cats always have black paw pads! This is also why some of these cats sport better eyeliner than I ever will in my lifetime. 😂
In a color code such as “NY11”, this is “N” - Black
Golden (or Silver.. or Cameo.. etc) - i.e. “Mutation”:
This is what color they appear to be, due to the pheomelanin (yellow pigment) vs eumelanin (black pigment) from their respective genes. For example, silver cats are due to the inhibitor gene. The inhibitor gene suppresses pheomelanin production over eumelanin.
In a color code such as “NY11”, this is “Y” - Gold
***And actually there’s usually one more section!:
The last space is usually reserved for how much the agouti / tabby pattern will show up within your cats. Shaded, ticked, tipped, chinchilla, smoke (no agouti pattern), etc.
In a color code such as “NY11”, this is “11” - Shaded
So how do we know what color Honey’s kittens are?
Truthfully, it can be really tough to tell sometimes! Some colors are just a little bit different and can change under just simple lighting. There are some tips and tricks to be able to tell, but we can do better educated guesses because we know their parent’s genes. If we’re ever truly stuck though (or if you are trying to figure out), a genetic test may be your best option.
Just a heads up, we’re not even going to look at the genetics of pattern here. That’s another blogpost on its own!!
With Katsu being Black Golden (Bb) but carrying Chocolate, and Honey being Chocolate Golden (bb) that gives us the following options, and in this percentage:
Black Golden & Chocolate Golden
With Katsu (Dd) and Honey (Dd) both carrying dilute, this means we can also get the dilute versions of those two.
Black/Blue Golden & Chocolate/Lilac Golden
So here’s the breakdown: (B - Black, b - Chocolate, D - Nondilute, d - dilute)
BbDD (12.5%) - Black Golden
BdDd (25%) - Black Golden (carrying blue)
Bbdd (12.5%) - Blue Golden
bbDD (12.5%) - Chocolate Golden
bbDd (25%) - Chocolate Golden (carrying blue)
bbdd (12.5%) - Lilac Golden
That means Honey and Katsu’s 3 out of 5 babies that present blue or lilac were a only 25% chance each!
Way to beat the odds!! You can see why I was surprised that 3 of them came out so much lighter than I expected!
Now this was only barely scratching the surface of cat genetics. This is just one (or I guess, two) traits that come into play with the final color of a kitten. There are many unanswered questions, like what determines the pattern of an agouti cat? What happens when you mix gold and silver? What about shaded and spotted? Shaded and solid?
There is so much more to come. :)
Keep up with Honey & her kittens here.