Friday Cat Blogging

This is Abracadabra, known to her friends as AbbyTabby. Abby is an ocicat, although she doesn't have the ocelot-like spots that gave the breed its name. Ocicats are a mix of Abyssinian, Siamese, and American Shorthair (which provides the tabby bullseye). Apparently what happens in development is that there is a reaction-diffusion process providing the rings, with a separate process that breaks the ring into spots. Abby seems to be homozygous for the recessive, non-functional form of the gene that initiates the second process.

She doesn't know she's a throwback, though. When you get past the wildness that seems to be characteristic of the breed, she's really a very sweet cat.