 Purred: Mon Apr 27, '09 6:34pm PST |
 | |  | | Oh, I know it can be so confusing with so many spotted breeds becoming more popular! And sometimes our dear Tabby cousins can get confused with us on account of their broken stripes so often looking like spots. 
Me and my brother, Loki, and my mommacat, Teaka, are all purebred ocicats.
One of the things that surprises a lot of humans is that Ocicats are 100% domestic cat. Ocicats are the result of a three-way mix of Abyssinian, Siamese and American Shorthair. If you were to look each of those up individually, you would be able to see reflections of each breed in the Ocicat.
This means a couple things:
Our body types can range from slender (Aby/Siam) to muscular (Amer. Short), but we are rarely larger than 12-15 lbs. (Loki runs on the big side, I'm the skinny boy)... excepting cases of overfeeding, of course.
Our spots are usually small dots (not rosettes), and may reflect the circular "target" pattern of the American Shorthair on our sides (as opposed to the more "stripey" pattern of our tabby cousins). You can kinda see what I mean in the pic. of me with the dog when I was a kitten.
We do sport a few stripes on our legs, chest and tails. The chest/neck marking usually looks like a broken necklace. Stripes on the legs are usually broken, not banded all around.
We often sport the "M" on our forheads, courtesy of the Siamese and Aby. ancestry.
Something a bit unique from our Abyssinian lines is our "ticked" or "agouti" fur. This means that the individual hairs are actually banded with different colors, not a solid single color. Even the "background color" is ticked.
The 3-way mix of Abyssinian, Siamese and American Shorthair lends to generally intelligent, outgoing and friendly personalities. Mom's friends always comment on how friendly and amiable we are. And Mom is always complaining that we are too smart for our own good! MOL  |  |  | |  |
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