Marble cat: an amazing color of a pet

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

When choosing a purring pet, people are primarily guided by its appearance. This is understandable: the kitten's character has not yet developed, habits, both good and bad, have not been determined, so it remains to rely only on the visual perception of the animal. And if a person chooses a pet among thoroughbred animals, his attention will inevitably be attracted by a marble cat - no other color can be compared with it in brightness and catchiness.

Marble color

Breeders have bred many varieties of colors of the cat tribe. In this palette there is a section called "tabby". It combines animals in which the coat is dyed in two (rarely three) different colors, and the contrasting shade should be a well-defined pattern. Among them, there are spotted, brindle, ticked and marbled color of cats, which is considered classic. The main and mandatory features of the latter are as follows:

• mark on the forehead in the second color, reminiscent of the letter M;
• eyes and nose outlined in base color;
• alternating rings on tail and paws;
• on the chest and stomach two strips separatedbutton stains;
• coloured stripes on the neck - they are also called necklaces;
• three pronounced wide stripes along the entire back;
• shoulder pattern resembling a butterfly;
• circles, semicircles or symmetrical divorces on the sides;
• eyes are a deep yellow, closer to orange or a shade of old honey.

The drawings should be clear, not blurry, and the contrast between the main and second colors should be very sharp.

Shades of color

"Marble" can be almost any color that is inherent in cat hair. According to the international classification, the marble color of cats includes the following varieties:

• Black marble. The main background is copper-brown, the pattern is black.
• Chocolate marble. Wool - the color of milk chocolate, pattern - dark, bitter chocolate.
• Cinnamon marble. Sounds strange, actually means that the first color is honey, and the second is reminiscent of a shade of cinnamon stick.
• Red marble. A classic ginger cat with a richer, almost brown pattern.
• Blue marble. The background is soft beige, the pattern is steel blue.
• Purple marble. One of the rarest. Wool - lavender shade, pattern - steel.
• Tortoise marble. It is even rarer than the previous one, and it is inherent only in cats - there are very few cats with this color. A third is added to two colors, but the pattern is clearly expressed. Can be made in any shade, but more oftenonly found in chocolate tones.

In what breeds is "marble" registered

Practically all shorthaired cats have merle varieties. In "shaggy" cats, it is difficult to achieve a clear pattern precisely because of the length of the coat - visually it blurs. However, among the Persians, the marble color of cats is still registered. But among the Siberians, it was not possible to get a distinct pattern due to a different structure of wool. There is no such coloring for sphinxes. And this is understandable, since they do not have wool. However, the most famous cat is the British marble (thanks to the TV commercial of Whiskas). Many people who want to get an animal of just this coloring call it “whiskas coloring” and do not understand what they say about the marble color. The Scottish marble cat, especially the lop-eared one, is also very touching and popular. Maine Coons of this color were also bred, and other well-known breeds got it.

How cats are bred with this pattern

Of all the tabby varieties, the marble color of cats is the most recessive. Therefore, in order to get kittens of the desired color, marbling of both parents is required when crossing - then the kittens will definitely have the desired pattern. A somewhat less effective mating, in which one of the parents is spotted or brindle. When mating only tigers, all kinds of kittens will be born - both "tigers", and spotted, and "marbles", unless, of course, the parents have the desired gene. Crossing a brindle sire and a spotted sire will give the same results, but a pair of spotted sires will only givemarble and the same as them.

Marble in the wild

As is already clear from the article, such a beautiful coat color in cats is artificially bred by humans. However, here nature is ahead of people. There is a real, natural marble cat, which got its color in a natural way. The size of the animal corresponds to its domestic relatives and is extremely similar to them, only the tail is longer than we are used to, since the animal lives on a tree and uses it as a balancer. Only DNA analysis showed that the marble cat is closer to large relatives like lions and tigers. An animal with an outlandish coloring lives in the Nepal zone (northern India and Indonesia), it is still little studied (even the number is known very approximately), and in captivity there is a single copy - in the Thai zoo.