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Folly is a true pink-eyed albino. Her eyesight is better than we expected but she struggles with depth perception at times. She's quite small and cold all the time but she's in good health!

Her brother Fortune is a black smoke believed to be carrying one copy that might be causing some interesting dilution (like that documented in albino-carrying seal Siamese lines - he has chocolate pawpads).

Much speculation on them! All we know is that they were abandoned before they were weaned, and that this combination of genes would be almost impossibly rare in the random-bred population. They're just over a year old now. Folly's around 7 pounds, Fortune's around 13 (dense dense boy). Many more pictures here since I don't have the greatest ones saved here, interested to see what you think!

I’m not sure what I was expecting when you sent that first ask. I thought maybe vitiligo or a chocolate moggy, certainly rare enough to be novel but still common enough that I’ve seen it before a few times…

A bonafide albino did not even cross my mind. I think the only other one I’ve seen is @pangur-and-grim’s Pangur?

Albinism is a TYR mutation along with the other color restriction genes (colorpoint, mink and sepia) as opposed to a KIT mutation like dominant white and white spotting. It’s very rare, only 4 of 9229 cats tested by UC Davis were albino.

Folly is absolutely gorgeous, a real treat. Thank you for sharing her!

The inhibitor gene (responsible for smoke and silver) is distributed fairly well in random-bred populations so I’m not surprised by Fortune’s coloration - he’s stunning though, and I adore his name.

here's a compilation of albino cats. their eyes generally range from ice-white, to a deep maroon like Pangur:

this variance is caused by the intensity of the structural colouration in their eyes, but they always have red pupils in common. from the photos on your instagram, it looks like Folly falls more into the ice-white category, with weak structural colouration (meaning she'd have bright yellow or orange eyes if she had pigment!)

i have a curly tail cat! she's out of a feral colony, so likely pretty inbred lol, but i don't live close enough anymore to the colony to see if there are others. my spouse used to be a vet assistant and always comments that her back muscles at the base of her tail are ridiculously well defined

Very cool black tortoiseshell and white Domestic Shorthair.

Hi again! I hope I’m not bothering you with too many asks, I just thought you might like to see this cool cat! What kind of tortie is he? Do male torties all have a similar pattern or can they be just as varied as regular female tortoiseshells?

Yes, but not always through the same mechanism. It depends on the cause, but in the case of klinefelter cats - like this one - they have an extra X chromosome so the mode of inactivation should be the same.

Now this cat is super interesting.

The first thing I noticed when I saw these pictures is that he doesn’t look like he’s “just” a tortoiseshell tom. I can see agouti patches in interspersed throughout the tortoiseshell which wouldn’t be cause by klinefelter.

So I went to the group and began to scan the comments to see if he had any testing to confirmed the XXY karotype or if it was a differential diagnosis based on visual markers. OP mentioned the only other “symptom” being gynecomastia or mammary hyperplasia.

But someone else linked a Messybeast article.

And I’m pretty sure this cat is featured in it.

The image on the website is sourced to the commentor of the article who is also the owner of the chimera tortoiseshell tom Ezra.

So I wonder if there’s some misattribution going on? Especially as the article cites chimerism but the owner says klinefelter syndrome.

But this is definitely the same cat.

Here’s a Siberian with a similar psuedomelanistic presentation.

Wonderful Aquamarine Mia

🐱 Altai

📸 Anna Kalinichenko [Wonderful Aquamarine]

Mul’tik Dom Sapfiroff

🐱 Maine Coon

📸 Sofya Karpuhina [Dom Sapfiroff*RU]

Cosmicbengal Razzmatazz

🐱 SBT Bengal [Bengal Cat Terms]

📸 Michelle Farnsworth [Cosmic Bengal]

People on Reddit are talking about the interesting coat on this girl. Current theories are mostly orange tortoiseshell or chimera. What do you think?

Link to discussion will be dm'd to you.

[link to discussion]

Woah, what a unique looking girl-!

I’m inclined to go with the “mostly orange tortoiseshell” side of things, so genetically a black tortoiseshell that just happened to wind up with more red displaying than black.

🐱 British Shorthair

📸 Whiskerton Cattery

🎨 Lilac Golden Shell

Note:

I was looking at local shelter cats, and this guy's colouration is bizarre.

it reminds me of the charcoal gene that bengals have, but without the distinctive white goggles:

or the abundism mutation you see in leopards:

here is a photo of my mom's smoke tortie that shows the undercoat:

© Jenny Kaplas

Lynx which fell asleep on a porch is woken up by its tiny counterpart 

Big Caturday Vibes in the Serengeti

#Repost @micatosafaris ・・・ near some kopjes, aloft on the side of the road in an acacia tree branches long ago bowed is a pride that climbed to sleep

So concludes Micato’s Art of the Safari Nap series. Serengeti lions image by Micato guest Paul Bruce. Happy weekend, friends!