I have a brown (cinnamon) cat, I assume her alleles would be b’b’ and oo. She was bred with either a black male (B_ o) or an orange male (__ O), or both if it’s possible for her to have carried the black cat’s sperm with her for a while until she met the orange cat. I can’t remember how long, I was eight or nine when this happened. She had five kittens, an orange female, an orange male, two black males, and a cinnamon male. From my understanding, it shouldn’t have been possible for her to have two orange kittens, let alone for one of them to be female, with either male. However, I have only taken two genetics classes! So, how could this have happened?
Edit: cat coat color genes: Primary coat color alleles: B- black, b- chocolate, and b’- cinnamon. B is dominant to b is dominant to b’. Orange coat color alleles: O- orange, o- not orange. These alleles are carried only on the X chromosome. If the cat has OO or OY, they will be orange. If the cat has Oo, they will be tortieshell. If they have oo or o, the primary coat color will be displayed.
If my cat (b’b’ oo) mated with the black cat (B_ oY), the kittens should have been 50% black and 50% dependent on the second allele of the male, either black, chocolate, or cinnamon. None should have been orange. If my cat mated with the orange cat (_ _ OY), the kittens should have been 50% non-orange males and 50% tortie females. None should have been orange. I’m unsure about the black cats’ statuses as tabbies, as it can be hard to tell, and the black cat was a stray that we don’t have photos of to even try to check, but the brown cats and orange cats were all tabbies. None were dilute, none had white patches, etc. It is possible for cats to be intersex and for this to affect their coloration (XXY is how we get male calicos and torties), so perhaps the male orange kitten was OoY, but that would have made him a tortie. For there to have been an orange female or orange XXY male they would need two ‘O’s, which would not have been available to them. Or perhaps the female was just O? But I feel like the odds of there being two intersex kittens in the same litter must be very low. Plus, she had no other physical anomalies (she went thru a series of tests including ultrasounds, x-rays, and a CAT scan to diagnose a well-hidden tumor later in life and nothing strange came up internally either). The orange tom could not have been XXY, as this causes cats to be sterile. Also, the only mutations I have found that causes oo kittens to be orange also tend to cause a shift in coat color during kitten-hood, which none of the kittens experienced.
My cat:
My cat with the orange female and short-haired black male:
The orange female grown up:
The orange male grown up:
One of the black males:
Here is that same black male grown up, he’s the only one of the family with long fur!
Here is the other black male, you can see the stripes on their legs a bit as babies, not so much grown up:
The brown male:
And lastly, here is my cat and her brother as kittens, you can see he also had faint stripes. All of the kittens in their litter looked like either one of them and their mom was brown as well:
I don’t have pictures of either toms, one was a stray and the other was a farm cat. I do have a picture of my cat's mom and her litter if anyone is interested in that.
