One of the things I most regret this year is that when I adopted my kitten Pie, I didn’t adopt one of her brothers with her. I wasn’t sure if I was up to taking in two cats at once, and so I decided to play it safe, but Pie really needs a feline companion. What she has, currently, is a grumpy old cat that doesn’t want to play and is in fact spending as much time outdoors as possible to avoid her.
I’ve been waffling back and forth on getting her another kitten, mostly because of the logistical issues. But I’ve decided to bite the bullet. I’ve picked a kitten, and I’m going to spend the next few weeks working out how to best arrange things for him. Fingers crossed it will all work out, and they’ll become good friends. And maybe give poor old Enigma a break.
Merlin More Merlin Lookit the tufts on his ears!
Merlin’s sister Mystery (named after the Mystery that passed away this spring)
The rest of the litter was there too, but they insisted on hiding behind the toilet, so no pics of them. (Except for a bit of Mini’s butt in the background of the first picture).
And for completeness, here’s Pie this morning trying to catch the laser pointer.
This was very much my situation about 4-5 years ago. Charley was a rambunctious kitten and Lucia old and grouchy and in no mood to put up her new housemate. I had tried to adopt one of Charley’s sisters along with her, but someone else claimed that kitten first. It was nearly a year before I got another kitten, Emily, for Charley to run around the house with. (And, after poor Lucia passed on, got Annie to complete the Calico Trio. They’re all big girls now.)
Apparently this has something to do with a gene for a thing called “Agouti Signalling Protein” - not a geneticist, get lost at this point. But there you have it - black ‘wild felines’ are in fact in some respect better. Says Science!
Don’t know too much beyond the basics about cat genetics; a “wild-type” tabby cat has genotype A–B–D–, where capital letters represent dominant genes (so that the dashed genes don’t matter). A is agouti, B is black pigment, D is dense coloration. A cat of type aaB–D– has two recessive “non-agouti” genes, so it would be a black cat. aaB–dd would be a “blue” cat, aabbD– a “chocolate brown” cat, and aabbdd a “lilac” cat. All that is not even considering the half-dozen other genes that produce color variations, for instance the sex-linked “orange” aka “yellow” gene, various tabby variations, white spots, and other stuff.
Unlike dogs, a dominant black gene in cats is rare or absent, according to what I have read, so black cat fur is related to the mutant “non-agouti” version of the agouti-signalling-protein gene. That seems to be what the article is talking about, but I don’t know enough about it. Naively, blue cats, brown cats, piebald, or even white cats could have two copies of that recessive gene, not only solid jet-black cats. It seems there is a lot of potential complexity there, due to the way it interacts with other colour genes as well as the actual fur colour.
Monkey is a fine addition to their family. He’s proving to be a character. Just like big cousin/bro Bear. Fussy about food. And an amazingly loud meower. Cute as a button.
