From Solid to Smoky: What My Cat's DNA Test Taught Me

A fun journey into the science of coat color in cats

Last fall, after losing both our cats in 2022, Lenore and I adopted two eight-week old kittens named Bert and Ernie. We were originally planning on only adopting one cat, but when we visited the shelter and saw them together we were smitten and couldn’t leave without the pair. Fittingly for the pets of two vets (who tend to be a motley crew of hard scrabble rescues), they had a tragic backstory: They were from the same litter, and their mom had died during the C-section giving birth.

Feline DNA Testing

Every kitten in the litter except Bert was black or orange, while he was a pale white fuzz ball with faint smoky tips around his ears, nose, and paws. In the months that followed he got darker and darker around those areas as if he’d climbed out of a chimney. Within a few months he definitely looked like he could be part Siamese, Burmese, or some other exotic breed. We were curious to know if he shared the same common tabby parents as Ernie or if he had a different tom cat father. Fun fact: Cats in the same litter can actually be sired by multiple different fathers due to a phenomenon called superfecundation, especially since cats ovulate in response to mating. In fact, one study found that more than 70% of feline litters in cities had 2+ fathers!

To learn more, we submitted a Wisdom panel DNA test, similar to human DNA tests like 23andMe or Ancestry.com.

Disclosure: Bert donated blood to the Mars biobank and we received a free Wisdom panel along with baseline labwork as an incentive for his participation in the research project; I have no other affiliation with the test

A few months later, his results came back: