I'm just working something out and I would be interested to know, is there anyone out there who has ever seen any of the following in non-pedigree cats in your area?

1. ticked tabby (like the abyssinian)
2. Spotted tabby
3. silver (like the whiskas cat, but doesn't have to be tabby)
4. chocolate (ie. dark brown with pinkish paw pads)

Just wondering why these colours / patterns are so under-represented in the moggy population and working on a theory.

Liz

=lizward;122212]I'm just working something out and I would be interested to know, is there anyone out there who has ever seen any of the following in non-pedigree cats in your area?

1. ticked tabby (like the abyssinian)
2. Spotted tabby
3. silver (like the whiskas cat, but doesn't have to be tabby)
4. chocolate (ie. dark brown with pinkish paw pads)

Just wondering why these colours / patterns are so under-represented in the moggy population and working on a theory.

Liz[/quote]

I really don't know but had to say that I think the Whiskas cat is absolutely beautiful...

Straight over my head Liz i'm afraid don't do those colours and can't ever say I've seen them on neighbourhood moggs

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Could the silver stripey one in the Whiska's ad be a silver bengal????

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No Chrissy (Hello by the way)
It's a British shorthair for sure

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Christina

Oh, of course, doh! should have known that, BSH's have tons of different colours don't they

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One of our first cats was a silver (like the whiska's cat) and she was moggie so i'm guessing it's down to peoples preference of color and also that somewhere along the line a backstreet 1/2 or full breed has given "minion" moggies a bit of the good stuffSo whats your theory Liz-and why are you so interested-i'm not really btw-just being nosy

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Burnthwaites Siamese

Well, the abyssinian first came into the UK in 1868. Ticked tabby is dominant and all else being equal, you would expect to see far mroe ticked tabbies than all other tabbies put together. And round here, at least, you just don't see moggie ticked tabbies.

I'm wondering along these lines:

If we assume (not necessarily a valid assumption but let's assume it anyway) that there were no ticked tabbies in the UK before 1868, and if we assume again that the Abyssinians were taken straight into the care of a dedicated cat breeder, the question would then arise of how quickly it would take released heterozygote offspirng of these cats to spread their genes around the UK.

Now one has to bear in mind a few things. First, kitten drowning was the normal and only means of feline population control in those days and remained the norm for about 100 years. Second, in the days before everyone had a car, people would not normally have travelled miles to obtain a non-pedigree kitten, especially in the days when kitten supply greatly exceeded demand. So movement of domestic cats per generation would perhaps have been limited to a mile or so in any direction. Third, any cats that were abandoned and survived would have contributed to the gene pool of a feral population and those genes would have been spreading fairly freely but only with a movement of a couple of miles per generation.

So, imagine that the abyssinians brought the ticked tabby allele into the UK and that they were first introduced into a cat breeding establishment in one of the ports, how long would it take for this dominant allele to have spread throughout the UK? Which leads to two possible further questions:

1. If the ticked tabby allele has not yet had time to spread throughout the UK, is it more concentrated in some parts than others? (there could be a PhD here for someone!) - or
2. If the ticked tabby allele has had time to spread through the UK, why don't we see moggy ticked tabbies?

Since I can think of no possible selection mechanism that would select against ticked tabbies (rather the reverse in fact, anyone contemplating drowing a litter of kittens in the late 19th - first 70 years of the twentieth centuries, and choosing to keep one kitten back for the children / for a neighbour wanting a kitten / for the sake of the mother cat, would surely have been far more likely to have selected an unusual patterned cat than say a black and white cat or even a mackerel tabby.), I think the most likely explanation has to be that the allele hasn't spread far enough.

Do I have a potential PhD thesis, do you think? LOL!

My initial reply to your last post Liz was me being (jokingly) sarky,but i deleted it as on 2nd thoughts and from a lot of past and present posts,this is such a fascinating subject that most of us could learn so much from-myself included as it's my oh who deals with this side of our breeding. So if i could be so bold to ask you to post subject matters as this in the most lamest of terms that you can-as i for one get confused very easy-this would be fab and i'm sure would benefit everyone who is just getting started in breeding and those of us who just want to know but are lazy in researching or just need to be taught in as basic way as poss You clearly know your stuff in this area and know the members and i for one think you'd be ideal-if you have time and you don't mind,as then anyone with a mind like mine (once we know the initial basics) can have a better grasp on the more "advanced" side of things as it were,also if anyone else has some knowledge in any areas such as these please help Also this would be a great addition to the PF's encyclopedia too-just to push it a bit

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Burnthwaites Siamese

And furthermore - why aren't most moggies tabby since tabby is Dominant??

My theory so far (not that there's any way of proving it!) is that the Romans brought over cats other than tabby, but why they would select those is another matter. Or perhaps one needs to knwo what the propoirtion of tabby cats is in Italy?

This is fun - or perhaps I'm just a sad old git?

I'm not sure how to go basic enough for you Kelly, sorry - but you can ask me questions by all means and I'll try to answer.

Liz