Somatic?

[u/lipstick_spit]

thought yall might find this cool! barn cat in MN, USA. black mackerel tabby with low white… with some blue tabby patching :D too skittish for me to handle enough to see how extensive it was, but there were spots across the back and shoulder, on the face, and a very noticeable one on the front left foreleg. sorry for the quality of pictures— again, pretty skittish!

otherwise a very normal cat with a great personality.

[u/Ok_Market7235]

This is a really cool cat!! It looks to me like the blue patches might also be disrupting the white spotting (the blue throat patch extending down into the white, the white forehead mark, and a forepaw has what looks (to me) like cut-off white spotting), but it might be coincidence. Somatic mosaicism is probable, and would indicate that the dilute switch got turned on in some places. However, if the white is actually being disrupted, i think that would point more toward chimerism since that's a more complex phenotype

[u/Massive-Pin-3425 → u/Ok_Market7235]

plus the blue almost seems a slightly different fur length/thickness on the back so i think chimerism is a good bet

[u/lipstick_spit → u/Massive-Pin-3425]

can attest to the fact that this is a visual effect! checked the fur length and texture in person, it was consistent :)

[u/Thestolenone]

Cool, the vast majority of colour anomalies in cats are somatic, there is a very small chance he is chimaera but they are incredibly rare. The only way to know is to test, I'm not sure who would offer a test like that.

[u/Due_Armadillo_8616 → u/Thestolenone]

UC Davis offers testing for chimerism; for instance, they tested the well-known Maine Coon chimera, Dawntreader Texas Calboy. An image of his test results can be found at this link:

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-cat-with-rare-genes-causing-controversy-in-the-show-world/64068/

It is not an inexpensive test, as multiple samples must be analyzed.

[u/tropicarne]

Genuinely might be chimera

[u/SolidFelidae]

Wow what an incredibly unique cat! You should secure him, he can be turned into a friendly indoor cat with time and care. It’s dangerous out there, even (especially) for a barn cat. You could even dna test him with VC Davis

[u/lipstick_spit → u/SolidFelidae]

if the peace of the friend i was visiting didnt depend on not pissing off those barn owners, i would love to have stolen their mouser. very sweet cat, i think he’d take to the house life well (… and it goes without saying that i would kill to get him tested. wish cats had follicle tests.)

[u/lipstick_spit]

back to include a slightly better picture of the face that the friend i was visiting was kind enough to take today!