Squirt, a cat with an impossible mix of colours
Squirt lives in South Africa with Ronel Slabbert. He has a black shorthair body and a grey (blue) semi-longhair tail: an impossible mix of colours according to Sarah Hartwell, the UK’s doyen of cat genetics.
She says that he has a good claim to being a chimera cat because “he is a mix of black shorthair and blue semi-longhair… An impossible mix of colours in distinct patches, those patches are an impossible mix of fur type”.
Squirt a chimera cat with a unique coat. Photo by Ronel Slabbert.
Ronel tells me that he knew that his cat was unique in the way that he took on his big dogs, a husky and a mastiff. In fact, Squirt took over the whole household which includes, by the way, three other cats, he says.
Squirt is a rescue cat who was raised by Ronel from three weeks of age. He was neutered quite recently on March 1. The veterinarian was pleased and interested to see him and recommended that he look up information about chimera cats.
He is a unique looking cat. He immediately stands out as having a unique coat and who best to describe it than Sarah Hartwell. Thank you Ronel for contacting me and showing me your delightful cat.
P.S. I recently wrote about another incredibly rare cat living in France with a unique coat: Narnia. This cat was all over the newspapers recently.
P.P.S. Sarah taught me something today. She says that the split face tortoiseshell cats which we have seen quite a lot of on the Internet are not necessarily chimera cats. She says that they are tortoiseshell cats with a particular type of distribution of fur. In relation to domestic cats, within the popular press, the world “chimera” has come to mean cats with a clean central demarcation in fur colour on the face. It is a layman’s term in this instance.
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