Update: Matthew’s new kitten

February 11, 2015 • 6:13 am

Harry, Mattew Cobb’s new kitten, is proving both a boon and an annoyance, as kittens are wont to be. He is cute and affectionate, but also hyperactive, scratchy, and bite-y.

The good news is that he’s getting along well with one of the adult cats, Ollie. Here they are re-enacting the prophecy of Isaiah. (I don’t know a lot about cat genetics, but Harry’s pattern of being white but with blotches of pure mackerel tabby strikes me as really unusual.)

Harry and Ollie

But Pepper, the other cat, is being driven to distraction. Here Harry, through his importuning, has driven an annoyed Pepper into the wastebasket. (I am not making this up.)

Pepper drive to distraction

35 thoughts on “Update: Matthew’s new kitten”

  4. Maybe Pepper went into the basket in order to follow Hili’s lead on philosophical basketry. Do you really think it mere coincidence? Two photos of cats on WEIT, proximate to each other, both in baskets, though separated by vast geographical distances?

    I’ll warrant there’s more to this than meets the eye. Or Harry.

  6. “(I don’t know a lot about cat genetics, but Harry’s pattern of being white but with blotches of pure mackerel tabby strikes me as really unusual.)”

    I don’t know much about cat genetics either, but I thought that there was a locus with an allele which would act epistatically to suppress pigment production by other alleles. I also thought the epistatically-acting pigment-suppressing allele was X-linked, and random inactivation of one X-chromosome would account for the blotching pattern in heterozygotes, but if the kitten is named Ollie, maybe not.

    1. I meant Harry, not Ollie. I misread, sorry. Same conclusion: if Harry is a male, then X-inactivation can’t explain the blotched pattern, unless he’s aneuploid of the form XXY.

    2. The alleles that specify Harry’s coat pattern are fairly common, but the expression of them is a little odd here:
      – Harry is homozygous for the S allele of the pie-bald spotting gene. This gene exhibits incomplete dominance, such that SS individuals like Harry are mostly white, and Ss individuals are mostly pigmented with much less white, generally on the belly, paws and face. The S allele is epistatic to other pigment genes. ss individuals have no white at all. The S allele inhibits the migration during embryogenesis of neural crest cells, a subset of which produce fur pigment, from the dorsal midline to the rest of the body. That’s why the extremities are more likely to be white in Ss individuals. The pattern of Harry’s black pigmentation does look unusual, but is not genetically determined – the survival and migration of the neural crest cells is stochastic.
      – Tabby stripe is dominant to solid.
      – Harry has the X-linked black allele (as opposed to the orange allele).

    1. Yes, they did, and nobody actually gave the name that he used, but someone gave a name that will be used in the cat’s pedigree name, so I’ll award a book when I return from Mississippi. Thanks for reminding me.

  8. My new little monkeys (kittens) got my Kenyan ostrich-egg necklace down off the wall last night and dragged it up and down the stairs several times, leaving it sans two ostrich-egg disks and with a slightly chewed rawhide backing. (The sound was like my dog’s nails on the stairs). Ah, well, I had the necklace intact for 40 years…

  9. Haz question (clearly had a bible-deprived childhood, even though religion was compulsory when I was at school). I googled “prophecy of Isaiah” since I had no clue and I get the following:

    “And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive” King James version – apparently the spelling of the prophet’s name changed since the 17th C.

    This came up a couple of times when Hili and Cyrus were settling down together, so I was expecting something like lions lying down with lambs. I’m assuming that either I’ve got the wrong prophecy – or there is a different interpretation that my cold befuddled brain cannot interpret. Can someone set me on a path to enlightenment.

    Ta muchly

      1. So it is the lions and lambs thing. thx

        Always feels good to get my prophets aligned correctly

  11. Kittens really are adorable at that age.

    Then again, they’re also adorable at younger ages…and for decades after they’re no longer kittens….

    b&

  12. I love the tangle of Harry’s legs in the first picture!

    I think Pepper would like the photographer to put down the camera and ‘Get me out of here!!’ Harry on the other hand is already thinking up new possibilities for destruction…

      1. Tuna. Baihu needs a bath of FRESH tuna, for reclining into whilee receiving due worship.
        What a Bastet ?

        1. Not sure where I’d find fresh tuna I’d serve to him raw, outside a sushi restaurant…and local health codes wouldn’t permit him on the premises.

          HOWEVER…he’s inordinately fond of “bonito,” dried (and smoked?) shavings of something in the tuna family that’s apparently a common ingredient in certain Japanese dishes. It’s actually somewhat embarrassing how passionate he is about the stuff….

          b&

  14. I think cat genetics are completely weird. We had a tortoiseshell cat which was a blur of oranges, browns and blacks with some white patches on her paws and belly and she had a short tail. We never saw her mate. (We’d just got her from my aunt who’d found her in the garden and had never physically touched her. She was always very skittish.) She had five kittens. One was orange. One had a short coat, short tail and was black and white. Two had double coats with greys and black. One had a long browny striped coat with no tail at all. I don’t think any had full length tails.

    1. I’ve heard tell that a single cat pregnancy can result from various fathers, but then I’ve also heard that “fact” refuted. You’d certainly think it was the case the way litters can differ. Our latest little Carmen Dingle is a light gray tabby, and apparently all 4 of her siblings were pure white and her mother was tortoiseshell.

    2. This sounds like a setup to a problem that I’d give my Genetics class – given these phenotypes, determine the genotypes of the parents. Even making the assumption of a single father this is not impossible. I’ll explain if you like.

        1. The relevant genes described in Jason and Merilee’s posts are likely to be these:

          – An autosomal gene White gene with at least 3 alleles and complex relationships to each other.
          W = White dominant.
          w^s = white spotting. (Read this as “w superscript s”).
          w+ = wildtype.
          This produces the following white fur phenotypes:
          – W ? the White dominant allele and any other allele gives complete white coat. Often deaf and with blue eyes.
          – w^s w^s Homozygous w^s gives mostly white but with some pigmented fur, the latter usually on the back.
          – w^s w+ Heterozygous. Gives mostly pigmented fur with some white, the latter usually on the paws, face and belly.
          – w+ w+ Homozygous wildtype. No white at all.
          The W and w^s alleles are epistatic to all other coat color genes. Epistasis is the phenomenon wherein one gene hides the effects of others.
          In a cat with one or two w^s alleles and thus both white and pigmented fur, pigmentation is most likely to be on the back, and least likely on the belly and extremities. The exact pattern however is random, not genetically determined, so that identical twin cats might look very different, just as human identical twins have different fingerprints.
          I’ve simplified the above somewhat, because there may be several different w^s alleles with different white spotting patterns. That’s a complication that we can ignore.

          – An X-linked gene with two alleles, X^B (black) and X^b (orange). Females have two X chromosomes, and if they have one X^B and one X^b, they will have patches of both black and orange, which is usually called tortoiseshell if there is no white fur or calico if they also have some white fur. The pattern of orange and black patches, and white in calicos, is random. Not genetically determined.

          – The agouti gene with two alleles: AA and Aa genotypes are striped. aa genotypes are solid. However orange cats, and orange patches in calicos, are always striped (X^b is epistatic to aa).

          – The Manx gene. Mm cats have short tails. mm cats have long tails. MM fetuses die in utero.

          – Fur length. SS and Ss have short hair. ss have long hair.

          So Jason’s mother cat was probably:
          X^B X^b ; w^s w+ ; M m.
          Hair length of the mother is not stated. If she had long hair she’d be ss; if short hair she must have been Ss, because she has some ss offspring.
          Due to the presence of some white I would call this a calico, but I’m not sure that the calico/tortoiseshell nomenclature is definitive or that there’s not some regional nomenclature variation.
          I’m not sure what “double coat” means. Striped? If so that’s explained by the Agouti gene. A black/gray striped cat is actually black, with the A agouti allele depositing lighter yellowish pigment in the lighter areas, making them gray instead of black.
          If the father had a normal long tail, the offspring should be 50:50 long:short tail, so having all 5 with short tail is statistically improbable, but not impossible. Much more likely if the father was also short tail.
          There are a couple of explanations for the “browny” coat offspring, the most common one being a recessive allele that modifies black to brown.

          Merilee’s cats were probably these:
          Tortoiseshell (calico) mother: X^B X^b ; w+ w+
          Unknown father: X^B Y ; W ?
          Carmen Dingle (female?): X^B X^B ; w+ w+
          Siblings: ? ? ; W w+
          If Carmen Dingle’s dark stripes are black, she (he?) is actually black, with the interstripe regions lightened by the A agouti allele. However if the description is accurate and she actually has stripes that are medium gray with lighter gray interstripes, then she is homozygous for a gene dilute not mentioned above. Individuals of genotype dd are lightened all over: black modified to gray and orange to cream.
          Other irrelevant genes omitted for simplicity.

          See also a Wikipedia article on Cat Coat Color. This article is a little out of date and says that the White masking and white spotting phenotypes are due to two different genes. A very recent paper shows definitively that these are alleles of one gene, in the pattern that I described above.
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_coat_genetics#Genes_involved_in_albinism.2C_dominant_white.2C_and_white_spotting

          1. Thank you, Ed. So interesting, especially since I’m currently in the middle of Jerry’s student, Mohammed Noor’s, genetics course. Carmen ( nicknamed Dingle) has no black at all ( or white ), just medium and light gray. Got to dash out to dinner, but will study this more closely later🐱

          2. Interesting. I’ve got a genetics background, just haven’t dealt with crosses in years. It’s all been more molecular biology. That’s also quite a complicated interaction.

            By double coated I was referring to the fur length. So the black and white cat had short fur that was all the same length. One of the greyish cats (We gave away the orange kitten and one of the greys so I don’t know their appearance in detail.) had a very obvious double coat with some some hairs when short and others were two to three times their length. I Googled now and apparently those are guard hairs but there’s not too much information on them.

            I don’t think I have a picture of the different fur but you can see three of the cats I described here. https://evidenceandreason.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/rip-whitenose/ My cat coat terminology is not very good so it might help clear up some things. You can’t see their brother, without the tail, as he got sick and died about a decade earlier.

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