made these studying cat genetics over the past 2 weeks!
i felt like there weren't enough visual guides of cat genetics so i went ahead and made some simple ones, my main references were Sparrow's Garden the website, Sparrow's Garden the blog, Messybeast, and The Little Carnivore.
Please only use these for general reference and not for tracing, using as a base, or reposting!! You can trace the poses for practice, but please don't post them if you do so. Please don't use them as a free Base, either.
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I don't know if this question is already asked and my apologies if it has already been answered. But are there any actual differences about leucistic cats VS cats with albinism? Through either the image or the color of their paw and nose, ears.
I think the best way of using these terms is when leucism means an animal without pigment producing cells, and albinism means an animal with (mostly) intact pigment producing cells that nevertheless don't produce (the correct type and amount of) pigment. This means on the cellular level, there is a very real and tangible difference between them.
Visually? They usually mention the eyes, as albinos have pigmentless pale blue eyes with a pinkish cast (that's not always visible of photos), while full white cats can have pure blue and pigmented (green, yellow, orange) eyes. I don't know about any other noticeable phenotypic difference.
There are a lot of other things that can't be seen tho, like only full white being associated with deafness, difference method of inheritence (albinism is recessive, leucism is dominant), different genes.
HI... I've made another extremely self indulgent picrew
I made the majority of this in one night and polished it for another two days, this thing was built purely in a cat genetics autism fueled need to see if it was possible to make
it's not a perfect visual representation of all possible cat colours, there's only so much I can do within picrew's simple image layering, but I've done my best to make most colours look close to real life or at least nice looking
there's instructions included if you want to use it the way I built it to be used, but they're completely optional and you're welcome to just mess around with it with no rules if you prefer!
Sometimes I wonder what is happening in the cat gene pool to produce so many gray babies in recent years. Gray is commonly considered a "rare" cat color.
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blotched/classic tabby variation is so wide and I think it needs to be appreciated. Somewhat obviously our sketching is primarily focused on the torso area. Obviouslt not got repreesentatives of all the sorts- I don't have the hollow variants drawn, though you can see them here and there in the photos
The photos are ones I have accumulated over the last few years trawling through the rspca and aspca, along with various other sources. (This does unfortunately mean I am entirely stuck going with photos that at least mostly show the patterning, rather than having nice clear side photos to work with)
I have my fun clump up in the top right area of the photoboard that's got some real individuals, very unique. Blotched machine got drunk and half-arsed it.
It'd be interesting, maybe, to look at family lines and see if the patterning has trends that could link to genetic factors, or if it is just random chance in what variant pattern the skin thickens in, like fingerprints. Can't do that with the cats in my folders though since, well, shelter cats.
(Also, did not include any 'swirl' type spotted mackerels, since I'm, well, not counting them as Blotched, but it'd also be interesting to find out if there is even just a higher correlation of them in Mcmc/ mackerel-carrying-blotched lines.)
Does anyone have any favourite variations of blotched?
As I have been promising for years, the eye color chart is all cleaned up and ready to be shared! I'm totally ok with this being saved and passed around, that's why all my info is on it.
Basic image description is in alt, and a full transcript of all text in the image is under the cut.
This model has been in a process of expansion and tweaking for a very long time. Huge huge thanks to all the folks who contributed and hunted down photos, helped me name all the colors, and gave the final proofs!
Sparrow's Eye Color Chart 2025 Edition
Eye colors in cats are difficult to model because they vary to a significant extent on two axes. This is my best attempt at a general model of cat eye color based on observation and research into how eye color works across species.
Pigmentation refers to the amount of pigment in the colored layer of the iris. Higher pigmentation causes darker colors.
Refraction means the extent to which light is scattered in the structures of the iris. Higher refraction causes deeper blues or greens.
Eye colors are related to coat color, but not as closely as breed standards might have you believe! Most coat colors can have most eye colors outside of purebred lines selected to meet breed standard.
What Color Are My Cat's Eyes?
Color names are descriptive of the actual color of the cat's eyes - I chose them all to sound nice so that breeders can use them if desired. Note that breed standards have a much broader use of color names - "Amber", for example, may include much of the golden to orange range.
Colors are based on pictures of cats in full white light (such as midday sun fully illuminating the eye), and tweaked to look good on properly color-calibrated screens. Always determine eye colors based on how they look in full light.
Main Block
standard eye colors possible with most pelts
Every cat is assumed to have genes that specify some genetic eye color in the main block, but certain other alleles can depigment the eyes partially or completely, creating the lower block.
Pigmentation and Refraction are modeled here as dependent on multiple genes, which seems to best fit the wide spectrum of possibilities in cats. The actual number of genes is unknown and could be very many, but for simplicity they are shown here on a scale from 1-7.
In theory, the genetic eye colors of the offspring should tend to fall somewhere between the genetic eye colors of the parents. Then, any depigmentation factors are applied, which may result in an actual eye color somewhere below the genetic eye color.
Lower Block
occur with phenotypes which cause depigmentation of the iris.
Gray-blues: Fairly rare coloration. The cause of gray eyes in humans is not well understood, but one theory is that collagen or very small amounts of pigment in the eye alter the scattering of light.
Blues: Most common depigmented colors. Can be caused by white spotting/dominant white, colorpoint, and sometimes mocha. There are also multiple Dominant Blue-eye (DBE) mutations known which cause blue eyes as the main effect.
Albinistic: Caused by complete albinism, which also fully depigments the back layer of the iris meant to keep light from getting through. This allows the red color from the retinal blood vessels to bleed through, and also causes poor visual acuity.
Following is a list of all eye colors shown on the main diagram. Rows are pigmentation levels starting from the highest pigmentation, refraction increases from left to right.
Cats can exhibit a few different heterochromia types, most commonly a blue with a non-blue. The other most common cause for heterochromia appears to be localized hyperpigmentation, which can be caused by damage to the eye. It can also happen simply due to differing iris structure or unusual pigment migration within the iris.
It is also relatively common for the center of the eye to be a slightly different color, without being marked enough to constitute full heterochromia. My provisionary term for this is "dual-toned". The boundary between this and "true" central heterochromia is somewhat subjective.
For any form of heterochromia or dual-toned eyes, my recommendation for describing them is to note both colors with a slash. For dual-tones, I generally write the outer color before the center one.
Complete Heterochromia
Blue/non-blue is commonly caused by white spotting/dominant white, other combos are rare.
Sectoral Heterochromia
Blue/non-blue sometimes occurs with white spotting/dominant white. Can also be from hyperpigmentation.
Central Heterochromia
Can occur due to hyperpigmentation, uneven pigment distribution, or iris structure. More common in certain breeds.
Dual-toned Irises
Relatively small differences in central eye color are common in cats.
Iris Atrophy
Iris atrophy due to old age can cause a distinctive lighter ring in the center of the iris.
