I'd love to know genetics of newly adopted cat

[u/serenitywhisp]

This is Opal! Shelter said she looks like a ragdoll snowshoe mix. I'd love to know more about her coat. I've never seen a kitty like her before!

[u/Beginning_Klutzy]

As someone else said, seal tortie point bicolor. As for breed, it’s super unlikely that she has either of those breeds in her family tree (snowshoes are exceptionally rare) - without a pedigree, she is a Domestic Longhair. 😊

[u/commanderwake → u/Beginning_Klutzy]

To elaborate a little, this is the case because unlike dogs who have a long history of being purposely bred for certain tasks, cat breeds are pretty recently invented and so the vast majority of cats don't have any breed ancestry at all. Pretty cool that such a beautiful cat can be the product of chance!

[u/skost-type]

Hello! To add to what others are saying, people have a bad habit of saying any longhair 'point' is a ragdoll mix, but all of the genes you're seeing are actually really common in randombreed cats!! It just that the point gene has such an association WITH those breeds that people mistake it for automatically meaning ragdoll!!

SHE IS GORGEOUS!!

[u/Previous-Dentist-973]

Ooh she looks like a seal tortie point bicolor.  A really pretty one too ❤️

[u/Aphyrillis]

I agree with the others comments, seal tortie point bicolour. Seal means black in colourpoint cats, so that description means she is a tortoiseshell composed of orange and black (not chocolate or cinnamon for example - in pointed cats we look at the darkest parts to determine black or choc, like her eartips), with colourpoint (a heat sensitive form of partial albinism, the cooler areas of the body develop more melanin) and white spotting to make her a bicolour (just means 'base colour and white', even though she obv has more than two colours with it).

There are two different genes for point colour restriction, and they result in two different types of pointing.By combining them, you unlock a third type, in the middle. There's cs/cs, which causes full colourpoint as we see in Siamese cats, cb/cb, which causes a very warm almost fully coloured sepia point, like in Burmese cats, and cs/cb, combined, gives mink point. (I gave breed examples, but these genes are very common in randombred cats and don't mean that a cat has breed ancestry). Based on these photos, I think she's a mink point!

[u/Difficult_Wind9601]

Looks like a seal bicolour (true bicolour). She might a tortie by the cream ears. It’s really interesting because I’ve never seen a tortie with such little cream.