Yes. He's basically a Siamese with the white spotting gene.
The "himalayan" gene is thermorestrictive, which means, the parts of the body that are cooler (the extremities: ears, nose, feet and tail) are darker than the torso. Selective breeding is employed to modify the contrast between warm and cold...or dark and light. Kittens, being smaller and also being more protected from cold, are very light compared to an adult. If you shave a part of the "warmer" body (as, for example, the belly of a female when spayed), the hair tends to grow back darker as the skin was cooler where there was no fur. If you bandage a shaved "cool" body part (a leg, for example), the hair grows back lighter, because the bandage keeps the warmth in.
This gene is also one of the albinistic genes in cats, which is why Siamese cats' eyes glow red instead of yellow-green. It is incompletely dominant to the burmese gene; when you breed a Siamese with a Burmese, you will get, on average, one Siamese, one Burmese, and two Tonkinese.
The white spotting gene is a separate characteristic, and it is the same whether you see it on a Siamese, a black-and-white "tuxedo" cat, or a Japanese Bobtail.
There is a formalised breed called the Snowshoe (http://www.breedlist.com/snowshoe-breeders.html), which actually started from random-bred Siamese-with-white cats. I had one in high school (exactly 10 years older than Harri) called Sgt. Pepper who would have been able to be registered as a Snowshoe except he had too much white spotting (about 45%)!
More than you ever wanted to know about cat genetics can be found here... (http://members.tripod.com/~siamkatze/cca/genetics.html)
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timeasmymeasure
Re: AWWWWWWW!!!
Date: 2004-10-29 06:14 pm (UTC)The "himalayan" gene is thermorestrictive, which means, the parts of the body that are cooler (the extremities: ears, nose, feet and tail) are darker than the torso. Selective breeding is employed to modify the contrast between warm and cold...or dark and light. Kittens, being smaller and also being more protected from cold, are very light compared to an adult. If you shave a part of the "warmer" body (as, for example, the belly of a female when spayed), the hair tends to grow back darker as the skin was cooler where there was no fur. If you bandage a shaved "cool" body part (a leg, for example), the hair grows back lighter, because the bandage keeps the warmth in.
This gene is also one of the albinistic genes in cats, which is why Siamese cats' eyes glow red instead of yellow-green. It is incompletely dominant to the burmese gene; when you breed a Siamese with a Burmese, you will get, on average, one Siamese, one Burmese, and two Tonkinese.
The white spotting gene is a separate characteristic, and it is the same whether you see it on a Siamese, a black-and-white "tuxedo" cat, or a Japanese Bobtail.
There is a formalised breed called the Snowshoe (http://www.breedlist.com/snowshoe-breeders.html), which actually started from random-bred Siamese-with-white cats. I had one in high school (exactly 10 years older than Harri) called Sgt. Pepper who would have been able to be registered as a Snowshoe except he had too much white spotting (about 45%)!
More than you ever wanted to know about cat genetics can be found here... (http://members.tripod.com/~siamkatze/cca/genetics.html)