This thread was NOT written by me, and it is NOT written by ANY staff of this dream.

Anantomy

Cats have very well adapted body for hunting and surviving! They are very flexible, they have more muscles and loosely connected bones then humans so they can twist, turn, flex, leap and become small to escape into little places that we can't reach. The suppleness and power of the cat's back legs make it so that when running, cats are actually bounding -- taking small leaps to move fast. Cat skeletons, unlike dog breeds and other animals, are nearly all identical to their cousins. House cats are just, in essence, smaller versions of leopards.


LEGS, PAWS AND CLAWS

Cats have powerful back legs for running and jumping, and walk on four paws. Their front paws are thinner and the loose muscle connections allow them great mobility. Legs are used for walking, running, jumping and climbing and are flexible, powerful parts of the body. Cats stretch a lot, even in the Warriors series, in order to exercise and loosen the many muscles in the shoulders that are used for balancing and controlling the legs -- they're also the muscles that allow a cat to twist in midair and always land on it's feet.

The "haunches" and back legs are very muscular and flexible, and help the cat in jumping for prey and fighting. Their power and claws make them powerful weapons.

Since cats don't wear shoes, tough pads of hard skin on the bottom of their paws allow them to travel over rough surfaces and not damage skin (although unnatural rough surfaces, like roads, can cause pads to bleed). It's been reported that amputee cats, who may be missing a leg, will often have the stump's bottom skin turn callous and tough to form a makeshift pad.

Claws are a very important part of a cat's survival -- especially in Warriors, were cats catch and defend their prey, and collect moss. Cats, unlike humans, actually walk on their toes! The toe bones are called phanlanges, and the tarsals, bones that form the heel in a human foot are vertical located behind the toes. The claws can be unsheathed and sheathed, which protects the claws when the cat is running and moving and has no need of them. The claws are the FIRST line of defense, teeth are second, so they must be kept in good condition by scratching at trees or other surfaces (kittypet gossip has come up with bones, but so far that hasn't been seen).



HEAD, EARS, NOSE, EYES AND NECK


The cat has a muscular neck and a flexible collarbone, and highly developed senses. In a summary, the cat has excellent peripheral vision, but has trouble seeing close up details. A flexible pupil allows it to see well in near-darkness.

Both eyes and ears are used in the famous trick of landing on their feet. A small but important organ in the ears actually allows the cat to find the direction of gravity, aiding it in balance and landing. Cats have sensitive hearing to sense prey and enemies, and their ears are very flexible, able to rotate 180 degrees! The ears are satellite dishes for sound, and are also an important part of body language.

The last sense on the head and one of the most important is SMELL, it's 30 times more powerful then ours. Using it's sensitive but small nose, cats can recognize various scents. The cat doesn't actually use smell very much in hunting, in Warriors and as well as in real life, cats use scent to identify prey. In truth most cats use sight and hearing much more then smell in hunting. What isn't exaggerated is the way that cats identify each other using smell -- unified Clan scents are created by grooming each other and mingling scents, but each cat will still maintain it's own scent.

Within the mouth is a unique organ called the "Jacobson's Organ" which is also found in snakes and bats, and some other mammals. This is were the cats true sense of smell comes in -- it's a second and much more useful nose located at the back of the mouth. When cats in Warriors open their mouths to "scent" prey and draw in the air, they are having a Flehmen Response and scenting.

WHISKERS AND FUR


A cat's pads do not have a lot of touch sensors -- instead they use whiskers (on their face and on their "wrists" or front ankles) to sense the size of a space or the texture of a surface. In fact they're so sensitive that they can sense movements in the air.

SPINE


A cats spine is made of vertebra that are much more flexible then a humans. It's connected with flexible muscles that allow the vertebra to "drift" allowing a wide range of movement for jumping and stretching.

MOUTH, TONGUE AND TEETH


The Jacobson's Organ is an important part of the mouth but is discussed in this article at the end of HEAD, EARS, NOSE, EYES AND NECK, since the cat uses it for smell. Cats have sharp teeth which are the second line of defense in a fight, and are vital for eating meat which a cat needs to survive. The canines in the front of the teeth are the killing weapons, used often (in Warriors) to snap the spine of prey to order to kill it quickly. Cats use the scissored molars to slice prey into edible pieces.

Even more interesting is the cat's tongue -- which actually has thousands of tiny barbs that allow the cat to lick meat off bones, and to groom themselves. A cat also uses it's tongue to drink, by scooping water amd pulling it back into it's mouth.

This article was written by Matthias (Birchpaw/Smokefur)

Colors: Creating Your Character's Appearance


As important as creating a name for your character, is figuring out what your character will look like. In cats, there are very distinct colors and pattern types, and they are very much different from dogs in terms of what colors a cat can be.

First, I will outline what coat colors can exist in the cat, and will spare you the genetics talk from the tortoiseshell essay (this time!).

Afterward we'll touch on what isn't allowed for coat color and pattern.

When creating a Warriors character, you must bear in mind that these are feral cats living in the wild, having had many generations of litters.
Unusual coat colors unique to certain purebreds are very rare in these wild cat colonies, as the cats in the clans are results of random pairings rather than the careful planned breedings of "kittypets."



Color: The Basics

The ancestor of domestic cats is the african wild cat, which has a brown tabby coat (known as "agouti") that allows it to blend into the background of its environment. As a result, brown tabby is the most common and basic of coat variations in the domestic cat.

Patterns:


Tabby

Tabbies are known for their stripes, which form a unique patterning to their coat.
Brown tabby is the most common and natural of colors; many times the term "tabby" just means a basic brown tabby.

Tabby is the most common of all patterning in cats, especially the brown tabbies. Because tabby is the original cat color, some solid colored cats will have very faint tabby markings despite not being tabby.

All tabbies, whether they be brown, orange, or gray, have thin pencil lines on the face, expressive markings around the eyes, and a tabby "M" on the forehead. If you look up close at the light parts of a brown tabby's coat, you will see that the individual hairs are striped with alternating light and dark bands, like the fur of a rabbit or a squirrel. This banding is called "agouti." Tabby is thought to be the "wild type" (the original color) of domesticated cats.

There are four different tabby patterns:

* A "mackerel tabby" has narrow stripes that run in parallel down its sides. This is what some people refer to as a "tiger."



* A "classic tabby" cat has bold, swirling patterns on its sides like marble cake. This color is called "blotched tabby" in the UK.



* A "spotted tabby" has spots all over its sides. Sometimes these are large spots, sometimes small spots, and sometimes they appear to be broken mackerel stripes.




* A "ticked tabby" (sometimes called "Abyssinian tabby" or "agouti tabby" ) does not have stripes or spots on its body. However, like all tabbies, it has tabby markings on the face and agouti hairs on the body. This is the color of the Abyssinian cat, but it also appears in non-purebreds and does not mean the cat is Abyssinian.



Tabbies come in many different colors. You can tell what color a tabby is by looking at the color of its stripes and its tail tip. The color of the agouti hairs (the "ground color") may vary tremendously from cat to cat, some cats may have a washed out gray ground color and others will have rich orange tones.

* A "brown tabby" has black stripes on a brownish or grayish ground color. The black stripes may be coal black, or a little bit brownish.

In the Warriors series, when a character is mentioned as "brown" they are a brown tabby. Solid chocolate/liver, which is seen in dogs such as Labradors, is a recessive color, and is restricted to purebred cats from specific breeding programs.
You won't see a chocolate colored cat in the wild!



* A "gray tabby" or "blue tabby" has gray stripes on a grayish or buff ground color. The gray stripes may be a dark slate gray, or a lighter blue-gray.



* A "red tabby"has orange stripes on a cream ground color. The orange stripes may be dark reddish orange, or light "marmalade" orange. Also referred to as "orange" or "ginger".



* A "cream tabby"has cream stripes on a pale cream ground color. These stripes look sand-colored or peach-colored rather than orange. Basically, a very light red tabby.



Silver tabbies also exist, but this patterning generally exists in purebreds, and not in the wild cats of Warriors.

Solids and Smokes

A cat that is the same color throughout, is referred to as a "solid" or a "self"

* A "solid black" is just that: black all over. It may be coal black, grayish black, or brownish black. Black cats can "rust" in the sunlight, the coat turning a lighter brownish shade.



* A "solid gray" cat is also self explanatory. A cat that is solid gray, either a light gray, or a dark gray..



* A "solid blue" is blue-gray all over. It may be a dark slate gray, a medium gray, or a pale ash gray. This color is also sometimes called "maltese." This is the color of the Russian Blue, Chartreux, and Korat, but it can appear in almost any other breed as well, and is also seen in non-purebreds. Solid blue does not indicate that a cat is related to any of these breeds.

* A "solid white" is white all over. Sometimes white cats have blue eyes, sometimes they have green or gold eyes, and sometimes one eye is blue and one eye is green or gold! This last color is called "odd-eyed white."



Most solid colored cats are the result of a recessive gene that suppresses the tabby pattern. Sometimes the tabby pattern is not totally suppressed, so you might see indistinct "shadow" tabby markings in certain lights even on a solid black cat. If you look at a black leopard in a zoo, you might also see these shadow markings, because the black leopard has a similar spot-suppressing gene!

The tabby-suppressing gene is not effective on red or cream cats, so you won't see red or cream cats without tabby markings.

(Even Firestar, who is mostly orange, is described as having some tabby markings.)

Solid white cats are the result of a different gene that suppresses color completely. Young white cats often have vague smudges of color on the top of the head where the color is not completely suppressed. Sometimes this persists even in an older white cat.


If your cat is pretty much solid black or gray, but the roots of the hairs are distinctly white, it is a "smoke." (It's normal for the roots on a solid cat to be grayish; true smokes, on the other hand, have definite white roots.) Smokes are the solid version of silver tabbies. These cats are very dramatic because when they move, the hair parts and the white undercoat can be seen.

* A "black smoke" is a solid black cat with white roots.
* A "blue smoke"is a solid blue (gray) cat with white roots.


White Spotting



The gene for white spotting, denoted by the gene symbol "S" can also create the impression of a self white cat. This gene is semi-dominant and is variable in the way it is expressed - a cat may have no visible white spots or may be wholly white and all stages in between those two extremes. Unlike dominant white, white spotting is not linked to deafness.

Some white cats are due to the very variable expression of the gene for white spotting. The diagram above shows a typical progression from solid colour through to solid white caused by this gene. The number by each diagram is the "Grade" of spotting from Grade 0 (no white spotting) through to Grade 10 where white spotting has obscured all of the base colour. Grade 10 white spotted cats resemble solid white cats, but are rarely deaf. Again, small spots of colour may be discernible on cats that appear solid white due to the white spotting gene.

Cats with white markings

Clearly delineated white markings (as opposed to shaded points, like the Siamese) can appear on any color. Just add "and white" to the cat's basic color to describe the cat. So for example your cat might be a "black and white" or a "cream tabby and white."

Cats with white markings might have larger or smaller areas of white. If you want to describe your cat's color more precisely, there are different names for the different amounts of white:

* A "mitted" cat just has white paws.
* A cat with a white spot on its chest has a "locket."
* A cat with one or more little white belly spots has "buttons."
* A "bi-color" is about half white.
* A "harlequin" is mostly white with several large patches of color.
* A "van" is almost all white with color patches only on the head and tail.

There are a couple of affectionate, informal terms used for black and white cats:

* A "tuxedo cat" is a black and white cat with white paws, chest, and belly. It might have some white on the face as well.
* Some people call black and white cats "jellicle cats" (after T.S.Eliot)

Torties, torbies, and calicos

(See the Tortoiseshell/Calicos page to learn more about these type of cats! Tortoiseshell/Calicos are to female only!)

Pointed ("Siamese") pattern

If your cat has dark "points" (face, paws, and tail) shading to a much lighter color on the body, it is a "pointed" cat. This is the pattern of the Siamese cat, but many other breeds as well as non-purebreds also come in this pattern, so it does not mean that the cat is a Siamese. This pattern is also sometimes called the "colorpoint" pattern (not to be confused with the Colorpoint Shorthair breed) or the "himalayan" pattern (not to be confused with the Himalayan breed).



Pointed cats are born white and gradually darken with age. A young pointed cat will have a much lighter body color than an older pointed cat.

Pointed cats can come in many different colors:

* A "seal point" has dark brown points and a body color anywhere between light brown and ivory.
* A "blue point" has gray points and a light gray or beige body.
* A "lynx point" has tabby points! It might have any of the colors described in the tabby section. For example, you could have a "blue lynx point" or "red lynx point." The body color may show some shadow tabby markings, especially as the cat gets older.
* A "tortie point"has tortoiseshell points, and a "blue-cream point" has blue-cream points. Patched tabby points are also possible.
*A "flame point" has ginger/red points.



You can even have a pointed cat with white markings! If the cat has a lot of white, however, it can be hard to see the pointed pattern (especially on the feet). White markings will cover up any other color where they appear.

Colors Not Permitted For Characters:

Now that you know the basics of coat colors, we'll discuss some commonly seen coat patterns that would not be permitted for Warriors characters.

NONE of the colors discussed below this are permitted.

Unusual Coat Colors (Fire-engine red, green, purple, pink, etc.)

This pretty much is a given. Real cats don't come in Crayola colors, and Warriors cats certainly don't either.

Male Calicos/Tortoiseshells, or a male cat with both black and ginger/red

This is explained in detail on the Tortoiseshell/Calicos page.

Uncommon Solids

While solid chocolate, fawn, lilac, etcetera, exist in cats, they were developed to certain purebreds after generations upon generations of selective breeding.

As noted above, when a cat is mentioned as being "brown" in the warriors series, they are brown tabbies, not solid chocolate or liver brown.

Unless there's a rare instance of an escaped kittypet, none of these colors are acceptable in wild-bred cats.

Lilac:


Chocolate


Tattoos/Tribal Markings/Jewelry/Accessories/etc.

These are cats born and raised in the wild, away from people. They aren't going to have "twoleg-accessories", and a kittypet would have a cat collar and nothing more.

Distinct/Special "Markings" and Unusual Color Combinations

There have also been instances of people making unusual-looking coat patterns that were not mentioned in the Acceptable Colors list at the beginning of this page. These are so varied that it's impossible to get into specifics, but one must use their common sense when creating their character.

It is unnatural, for example, for a solid orange cat to have a perfect patch of brown or black in one particular spot on its back, or a solid gray cat to have a patch or patches of black on them (unless they are a smoke, but smokes have a distinct patterning.)

Also, you can have a white cat with black patches, but not a black cat with white patches (and yes, there is a difference.)


Tricolor Cats

Tricolor patterning, which is very common in certain dog breeds, does not exist in cats, even in tortoiseshells.
What does a tricolor dog look like?:



Tricolors have distinct tan markings above the eyes, on the cheeks and face, and on the legs. Tricolors may exist as mostly black as seen in the collie above, and also in red merle, blue merle, and solid red.

In tortoiseshell cats, the patterning does not exist in such a distinct manner as it does in tricolor dogs, because the wild cats are a product of random breeding whereas dogs are crossbred to create distinctive breeds.


Other Patterning Seen in Dogs

Patterning seen in dogs that is not permitted in cats are as follows:

Merle:



Roan

Roan is a coat pattern in which the base color (often red or black) is mixed with white hairs and looks lightened or mottled.



Brindle:

Not to be confused with tabby.



There are various other dog-specific colors (dapple, sable, bronze, sedge, belton, deadgrass, wheaten, mahogany, liver, chocolate, slate blue, blue-black, chestnut, and so on) that are not permitted in cats, but there's too many to post picture examples here.

This article was also written by Matthias (Birchpaw/Smokefur)

Questions and anwsers on Toroiseshell

Wait, what on earth is a tortoiseshell? Torbie? What are you talking about?

I won't bore you with the technical terms , but basically tortoiseshell is a name for a coat coloration in cats, where a shade of black and a shade of ginger (orange) both exist on the cat to form a unique pattern. The name "tortoiseshell" refers to cats that have little to no white markings, and whose coat is a mix of black and ginger.

Cats that have a significant amount of white in addition to the black and ginger are referred to as tortoiseshell-and-white, or as "calicos" in the United States. As the books are set in the United Kingdom, the term "calico" does not come up in the books.

Calicos and tortoiseshells may also come in "dilute" form. When dilution genes are present, the color is modified so that the black appears as gray or grayblue, and the ginger as a lighter cream or fawn.

Ahh, I see! But, what are torbies and calibys?

Torbies are cats that have tabby markings, with the addition of cream or ginger/orange markings. The dilution gene can also occur in these, causing the cat to be a lighter gray tabby with the presence of a lighter ginger or cream. Cats with torbie markings and white, are called torbie and white, or "calibys". The latter term is not used as often as the former.

It is also possible for pointed cats (i.e. "Siamese" or "Snowshoe" types) to have torbie and tortie points.

Hey, those sound pretty cool! I'm going to make a calico tom right now!

Whoa there, not so fast! In cats, calicos and tortoiseshells are almost always female; male calicos and tortoiseshells are extremely rare.

What?! I want to make my tom a calico! Why can't I?!

To answer this question, one must look at the genetics of color, and genetics in general.

As many of you probably remember from basic biology, gender in mammals is determined by two chromosomes, known as X and Y chromosomes. Females possess two X chromosomes (XX), while males possess one X and one Y (XY).

...what's a chromosome?

To explain what a chromosome is, let's summarize what the term "DNA" means. DNA, which stands for Deoxyribonucleic acid, is basically the genetic blueprint that contains instructions for development and function in living things. All living things with the exception of certain viruses, are made up of DNA.
DNA can be -very- complicated to explain, and confusing to figure out, so I'm not going to hurt your head with complex and difficult terms.

...*blank stare*...

Don't zone out on me yet! It gets easier to understand from here.

A chromosome is a long, continuous piece of DNA organized in a cell , and contains many genes.

Genes contain information that contributes to inheritance of behavioral and physical traits.

Genes that are located on either the X or the Y chromosomes are referred to as "sex-linked" genes, while genes on chromosomes other than the X and the Y are referred to as "autosomal" genes.

Below is an image of a "karyotype", which is a collection of chromosomes that make up mammals. This particular karyotype is a human male, as noted by the "XY" chromosomes seen on the very bottom right of the image.



As you can see, the Y chromosome is much smaller than the X chromosomes, and therefore contains less genes than the X chromosome does. Genes carried on the X chromosomes vary between species, and abnormal forms of these genes can result in genetic disorders.

In cats, one gene out of several that control fur color is located on the X chromosome. There are two forms of this color controling gene, which is referred to as an "allele". One form of this gene is "coded" for ginger fur (written as , while the second form of this gene is "coded" for black fur.

Since females have two X chromosomes, and since the colors black and orange are assigned to the X's, a female cat can be both orange -and- black.

Normal males have only one X, so they can be either black -or- orange, and -not- both.

To summarize:

- Females have two X chromosomes, while males have one X and one Y.
- Colors in cats are assigned to the X chromosomes.
- The colors black and orange are both assigned to an X chromosome.
- Female cats, since they have two X chromosomes, can be both black and orange.
- Normal male cats, with only one X chromosome, can have either black , or orange, and not both.

But I've heard of male tortoiseshells! I KNOW they exist! Why can't I be one?!

In rare cases, a male cat (or human) will be born with an extra X chromosome, making them XXY instead of the normal XY.

This rare syndrome is called Klinefelter's Syndrome. About one in 3,000 tricolored cats are males, although only 1 in 10,000 of these males is fertile. Why, you may ask?

I may ask.

Since having more than the normal two chromosomes is a genetic mistake, this results in a cat that is different from the norm.

Due to the fact that the Klinefelter's cat (or person) has an extra female chromosome, they will produce more female hormone (called estrogen) than male hormone (called testosterone). This results in an imbalance of hormones, which almost always results in the cat (or person) winding up as sterile.

In the rare event that a Klinefelter cat is fertile, they would not be able to reproduce their calico color, because of the fact that a genetic abnormality will not be inherited.

In addition to being sterile, the higher amount of female hormone will cause physical deformities and more feminine traits.

Weak and brittle bones are common in Klinefelter's cats, and misshapen feet and limbs have been recorded. Rapid weight gain has also been witnessed in Klinefelter's cats.

In humans, other traits are common with males stricken with Klinefelter's, and would also occur in a calico in the Warriors universe, since we see them "talk" to each other:

- Delayed and decreased motor function
- Delayed speech
- Delayed maturation
- Decreased muscle development
- Increased tiredness

In the rare event that a male calico/tortoiseshell (solid or pointed) would be born in a wild cat colony like the clans in "Warriors", the problems as mentioned above would result in them dying very quickly, and more than likely they would not live past kit-hood. These are wild cats, that are forced to fight for what they have, and survive bitter conditions.

All recorded Klinefelter's cats that have survived to adulthood, live with people that take care of them. The cats in Warriors live on their own, and even a medicine cat would not be able to fix the genetic problems that these cats have.

Oh, so, the cat would die?

Most definitely yes.

..oh..

..but...

um..

*long pause*

....what about Redtail?! He was a tortoiseshell!

Authors make mistakes. "Into the Wild" was their first novel and, as you read through the first series, and as both authors have admitted, their inexperience led to numerous mistakes that include the parentage of a lot of the cats in the original books, and the coloration of the characters.

Whitestorm's eyes change color multiple times, and Tawnypelt mysteriously changes from a ginger tabby in the first series, to a tortoiseshell in the second series, for examples.



...

How about a green and purple tom? Can I make one of those?


No.