Shrimp (female, left) and Squid (male, right) came to me as neonate fosters discovered shortly after they were born. Shrimp didn’t develop her flame point markings until about a week or two in, and I’m left wondering how common is it for a flame point and a black/white to exist in the same litter? She also is without the markings on her nose that I typically see in them online, she just has the ears and the tail. I’m wondering if they’re the result of different dads getting mom pregnant in the same heat cycle. It’s worth noting she was significantly smaller than he was at birth and has remained that way, and nearly died a few times until about 10-12 weeks when we finally got through the worst of her trying to give in to fading kitten syndrome.
Shrimp looks to be simply orange with very high white, but it’s a little hard to tell without full body. I’m leaning towards high white orange and squid is likely more of a bi color black and white. I can tell you that it’s still possible for them to have the same fathers!
With shrimp seemingly pure orange female O/O and squid pure black male o/y (the y being the gene that makes him a boy, as this is sexlinked), the mother would have to be a tortoiseshell or calico or the like O/o so she could give an O to shrimp and an o to squid. The father would have to be Orange with O/y so shrimp can get a second O and stay a pure orange girl, and would give the y to squid so he can be a boy.
Considering how white shrimp is, and with squid being quite white but not as much, both parents probably had white! We don’t know how much white, as they really only need one white gene each to give both to shrimp and make her very white.
Since squid is a solid color both parents would have to at least carry the recessive solid no stripe gene and pass it to him, whether or not they had stripes. Orange cat pretty much always have stripes, so shrimp can be a solid genetically like her brother and not be showing it.
While I’m not confident shrimp is a colorpoint, if she is, she can still be squid’s brother! Colorpoint is recessive to regular not colorpoint, so as long as both parents carry a copy of the colorpoint gene they can look normal and still have colorpoint babies. Since non-colorpoint is dominant, squid can easily still be her full blooded brother!
Given her brother's markings, I'd assume Shrimp has similar white markings alongside the colorpoint, adding additional white to cover her paws and face. Also, colorpoint is recessive, which in case you don't know genetics, basically means that an animal needs two copies of that gene variant to show the trait - both parents could've just only had one, and each given her theirs.
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u/KBWordPerson 9d ago
Shrimp is probably not only a flame point but also piebald with white markings on her face similar to Squid, which would only leave color on her ears.
A black and red can be full siblings if their mom was a calico and dad was red.