Kitten’s coat has very unusual traits

[learieonthewildmoor]

Cat Four’s brother Sei has moved back to his original home and is loving living with his mother. Excellent outcome because we were worried the mother might reject him coming back. He is a medium hair bicolour/tuxie and is growing a beautiful glossy coat on his head and back.
His belly, though, is distinctly greyer and he has grey and white tabby stripes on his under carriage. Never ever seen this. My understanding is cats are either tabby or solid colour/ bi-colour.
Has anyone ever seen anything like this?
Cat Four has the same pattern: solid grey on her head and back, tabby stripes in white and grey on the back of her tail and legs - but she doesn’t look odd, though it is, technically.
I’ll have to get my phone to post the photos - sorry!

DPumaCat is black with the odd white hair. If you look at him carefully he has tabby stripes. Mum is a tabby and the dad black. Siblings all tabby.

The other brother, Cinque is solid black but has the most beautiful deep brown tabby pattern you can in the sunlight.
Cat Three is a solid bi- colour, no tabby pattern. Cat Four and Sei are solid grey and black on their heads and back, tabby mackerel stripes underneath.
My iPad isn’t adding photos for some reason - apologies again.

One of our cats was a tabby/tortie, as described by the vets when she was registered. She had solid blocks of black, brown and white as well as patches of ginger tabby. I've never really thought much about it tbh.

My understanding is that the tabby gene is different from the colour gene in cats, and so tabbyness can be present in all cats independent of fur colour. There is a gene called “agouti” that determines whether tabby markings are expressed or not (and even solid colour cats can have tabby stripes that you can see only in sunlight.

But anyway “tabby and white” is a very common kind of cat colour which is both bicolour and tabby. Eg a mostly white cat with some tabby patches.

Waiting for cat tax pics...

Here is Cat Four, Cat Three and Four, and Cat Four and Sei. You can see Four has a grey back and striped undercarriage and legs; Cat Three is solid black and white; and Sei has funny grey tones on his belly and legs, where he should be solid.

You can see the tabby markings on Sei’s undercarriage. He’s a grey and black tabby underneath (the brown tone is a trick of the light) and solid bi- colour on top.

Sei's tail is clearly tabby as well. His colours may well "clarify" when he's a little older, as he's still got his baby fluff coat which can blur things like stripes.

Both the dearly departed Boycat, and Girlcat, were/are black with a white undercoat which is called smoke black - if they have the coat clipped e.g. for blood tests, it shows as a pure white patch on the black background. In addition, Girlcat can be seen in certain light to be tabby, but the grey is so dark you need to look closely - pic attached. This is called charcoal tabby. Smoke black is rare, charcoal tabby more so, and my vet has never seen both together in the same cat.

Oops promised photo this time - you may need to zoom in close on the head to see the stripes clearly.

He looks like a blue mackerel tabby. I've had tabby Maine Coons and some can look almost solid colour on the top but stripes show on legs, belly and tail.

Very beautiful kitten - he will grow into a stunning cat!

They're tabby/tabby white. Sometimes solid black cats can show faint tabby markings in a certain light if they come from a mixed colour litter.

Allergic, his brother Cinque has tabby markings on his black coat, not as well defined as your boy? there.
Mum is tuxedo solid black and white, no tabby markings. Never heard of blue mackerel - thanks TourmaletAndCoubous.

That's the girl in the pic, her brother is sadly gone (CKD).

The Toyboy I got her as company after I lost Boycat is a classic brown tabby & white, with the darkness of the tabby sort of graduated. He's mostly top half tabby & bottom half white with a few small tabby patches on legs and belly - the top inch or so either side of his spine are so dark they look black then morphs into mid brown. Patches on his belly are almost ginger, and the ones on his legs are sort of muted. Pics below hopefully show most of this.

True solid black is actually very rare in cats, most black cats are either very dark brown - so these are the cats that fad to brown as teenagers or very, very dark tabby. The very, very dark tabbies you can in certain lights see lines in their coat that are the tabby markers.
This is my very, very dark tabby.

I fostered two black kittens, they were completely black but in sunshine you could see a tabby pattern, we called them the 'black tigers'.

You can get " ghost" tabbies, a lot of grey cats are like this where the markings are so similar in shade that the colour looks solid apart from in certain lights

Origami cat (not her real name 🤣) was a solid grey but did have some tabby features in certain lights and clearly a banded tail. Just about visible on the attached.
Even Sybil had a few stripes visible as a kitten.

I seem to have illustrated @goingtohellinahandcart's point 😁

Oh he's lovely!! I know nothing about cat colourings but he is gorgeous :)

We had two multicoloured cats when I was growing up - I was told as a child they were tortoiseshell, but I think they were actually calico. One black, ginger and white, one grey, white and a sort of blonde colour. The blondish one had a lot of tabby in her. Very unusual, beautiful cat. Unfortunately we lost her to a fast road around age 2, which took us all a long time to get over. (I don't have a good clear picture unfortunately)

True solid black is actually very rare in cats

One of my previous cats was a true black, his fur was completely black to the roots, and in the sunshine his coat had a blue sheen on it, like a crow's feathers.

Grumpy: Sybil was an ADORABLE kitten! She’s such a grand lady now- though you can tell she knew she was going to be fabulous 😄😍

Thank you - I always thought she should have got a job as a 'chocolate box kitten' in her youth. 🤣

My boy - if you looked at him you would think he was totally black but if you look closely there are stripes on his head.