The Persian ticked cat is an experimental breed of purebred cat. It is probably confined to a single breeder – although I don’t know for sure. There is very little information about this proposed cat breed except what is inferred by the title of the cat. We don’t have a photograph of this cat which is indicative of its rarity or perhaps non-existence as at 2022.
This is a Persian cat with a ticked coat. And the two cats in the cat fancy that are well known as having ticked coats are the Abyssinian and the long-haired version of the Abyssinian, the Somali cat breed. You can read about ticking here with a fantastic picture of a wildcat the Jaguarundi: Ticked Cat Coat.
The pictures below are thumbnails. Please click on them to see larger images
Persian cat – photo copyright Helmi Flick
Somali cat – photo copyright Helmi Flick
FYI-the ticked tabby coat is an unpatterned tabby. The gene which causes this will coat masks any other tabby pattern. You will see it on Somali and Abyssinian cat breeds for instance. There is very little striping except maybe for thin stripes on the legs, face and tail. Only the agouti pattern can be seen which gives a ticked effect which has also been described as a salt-and-pepper appearance.
Here is the ticked tabby coat of an Aby:
The idea is to create a cat breed that has the range of colors and ticking of the Somali cat but with the body type of the Persian. The Somali is foreign type (slender) while the Persian is cobby (rounded). See Cat Body Types. The Persian ticked cat breed is then a Persian x Somali cross.
Under the Cat Fanciers Association breed standard, the Somali cat has four color types:
- Ruddy
- Red
- Blue
- Fawn
In The International Cat Association, they allow silver/smoke in which the ticking is added to by the presence of transparent/white hair shafts at the base (caused by the inhibitor gene) of the hair giving the smoke effect. You can perhaps visualize how this cat breed might look.
Some more from Sarah Hartwell
The go-to person for information about experimental breeds is Sarah Hartwell. It seems that this experiment never became anything tangible or long-lived. And therefore, the information is academic but it may interest in people.
She tells us that the Persian ticked was either experimental or a cross breed. That means a hybrid and it would have been a Somali X Persian longhair cross aimed at producing Persian-type cats with ticked coats and markings in the range of colours seen on the Somali cat including the silver series.
She tells us that the ticked pattern provides us with a different effect from the tipped/shaded/smoke patterns seen in Persian longhair cats. The combination of a long coat as seen in the Persian cat combined with the ticking as it is called would have produced a distinctive and attractive cat in the silver series.
