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February 10

orange cats in history

What is the earliest known depiction or mention of an orange cat? Of the domestic cats in medieval illustrations, are they ever other than grey tabby? —Tamfang (talk) 09:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Some information at A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals (p. 136):

There is little or no information from the literature or from early pictoral representations to indicate how ancient the four main groups of cats are: these being the two main types of tabby, the single-coloured black or white, and the sex-linked orange (marmalade and tortoiseshell).

Alansplodge (talk) 12:24, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This will be of interest, though precise dates on the paintings are often missing. Matt Deres (talk) 16:36, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Not an answer to the question, but I can't resist mentioning that John Aubrey said "I do well remember that the common English cat was white with some bluish piedness, that is a gallipot blue". DuncanHill (talk) 18:52, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This picture circa 1200, may be of an orange cat. --Jayron 32 19:17, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As a side note, does anyone know if the European wildcat, the wild species from which the modern housecat was domesticated, has orange fur as a variant? If it's a wild-type variant, one may expect it to show up in the earliest domestic varieties too? Maybe? --Jayron 32 19:15, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, though I'll note that the pictures in the article and on Commons, while definitely not orange in the sense that Jorts is orange, are also not simply grey or brown; there's a lot of different colours mixed in there. See Agouti (coloration) for more on this. Matt Deres (talk) 20:02, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Tamfang, Abigail Tucker's The Lion in the Living Room says that "evidence suggests that house cats' coats began to vary only in the last millennium or so...the first evidence of changing coats, Driscoll says, comes from a medical writer who mentions it about AD 600." That's this Dr. Carlos Driscoll, it might be worth looking through his publications. Sources cited: Driscol et al, The Taming of the Cat, Scientific American, June 2009 and James Serpell Domestication and History of the Cat in The Domestic Cat: the Biology of its Behaviour. And that "feline genetics suggest that, around AD 1000, [Vikings] took a shine to the orange cats they found near the Black Sea and spirited them off" to Northern Europe. Direct citation is to "Neil B. Todd, Cats and Commerce, Scientific American, 1977". It's a great book. Blythwood (talk) 22:43, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

While I'm not certain it's accurate, our article Evolution of the domesticated cat suggests it's now believed that the domestic cat arose ?largely from the Egyptian and Near Eastern populations of the African wildcat. (Althoughy also suggests it may have been in South-west Asia.) Cat#Domestication says something similar. Although European wildcat does seem to suggest phylogenies differ depending on whether your looking at nuclear or mitochondiral DNA. Then again, I'm not sure it makes much difference, I don't see any orange in the photos for African wildcats either. While not relating to colour, our domestication article mentions "The blotched tabby cat trait (Aminopeptidase Q mutation) arg similar. OTOH, European wildcat does suggest a difference between phylogenetic analyses of nuclear DNA or mitoose in the Middle Ages. Wild-type cats have a mackerel pattern". Nil Einne (talk) 14:22, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am surprised and delighted to see so many good replies so quickly. —Tamfang (talk) 23:13, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]