Visible Void
New void cat owner. Are these stripes hidden within the void common issue standard?
My void is black black. Great void form. But when he gets in the sun I notice these stripes that come out. (He has an orange brother that we adopted together. Idk if that matters) I’m a new first time void owner so I don’t know if the stripes are common or if this one is a little different?
For every cat post on the internet, there exists an equal and opposite niche subreddit dedicated entirely to that specific cat behavior, posture, or physical trait.
She’s a dilute! Those aren’t as common as the more solid coat. Dilute fur color comes from a recessive gene. She belongs on [r/dilutecalicos](r/dilutecalicos) and r/dilutecats
Black cats can be the cleverest cats on the planet, and the biggest idiots you ever saw. But unlike orange cats, it's often the same cat and incredibly often it's both within a five minute time time slot.
Yes my black cat can open doors and not just by jumping and catching the handles but by standing and slowly turning them because she doesn’t want to get caught. Same cat runs face first into walls when she gets zoomies. Her orange sister pushes open doors closed and traps herself
It's a ghost tabby! You'll see the stripes more in the sun and when they're kittens. Sometimes they fade more when they're adult but you'll still always be able to see the faint stripes.
It means they have tabby genes (either from mother or father)
IIRC it's the same principle as black panthers - they're achkshually not a separate species, just leopards with a genetic overproduction of dark pigments (melanism). Your kitty has a tabby blueprint, it's just "black on black". He's also adorable btw
My void is a ghost tabby also! I think the only breed of cat that is truly solid black is a Bombay. Most other black cats are mixed breeds and it's super common for cats to have tabby genes. That's why you might see a litter of cats that all look different- some orange, some black, some gray... And some of the kittens in that same litter might have the tabby genes from one or both of their parents where you'll see the faint stripes. It's pretty cool!
Fun fact - a panther is just a jaguar, puma or leopard with melanism, i.e. too much black pigment. You can still see any markings when the light catches them, just like OP's cat.
This 👆.
I don't find the source, but read a while ago that all voids are actually cats with pattern + melanism.
I see those stripes also on my void girl, when the sunlight hits her in the right angle.
Imagine how I felt when my tiny all black kitten turned white. Found out she has a fever coat and she's gradually growing out of it and turning back to black. Her belly is now black and she has a little white left on her bum which is also disappearing.
I don’t think all black cats have tabby stripes although it is common. My black cat came from a litter of tuxedo cats and he does not have tabby stripes.
i think it may matter if they are other breeds. like maybe all the skinny black cats?? i had a (what i assume to be) norwegian forest cat that was like 13 lbs, double coat...no stripes at any point. she was sort of dark brown in the bright sun, and then a grayish undercoat. absolutely no trace of tabby characteristics. 🤷🏽♀️ but i'm also not a hardcore cat-ist lol
I'm a cat gene nerd and I can confirm this! All black cats do have stripes, some are just so hard to see you basically can't see them at all. Stripes are caused by banding in the hair between the stripes, caused by the Agouti gene. Solid cats do not have this noticable banding but they do still have stripes, even if you can't really see them. It's most easily noticed on kittens and brown + cinnamon cats.
Normal! All my black cats have a slight red/brown undertone that's only visible in sunlight. My first void also had vitiligo so he started slowly turning white with age lol
Fun fact: you may well have stripes also, and this is part of how your cat recognises you. It's just your stripes aren't visible to human eyes, but they are are to cats.
Reminds me of Rudyard Kipling's description of Bagheera in The Jungle Book: "inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk"
I believe this is called ghost tabby, something i recently found out. Our front neighbors cat had 3 kittens. One is toxido. One is a orange tabby and one black ghost tabby. It really hits different. Its totally cool.
So far, every void or tux I've seen in the sun had faint stripes, including my tux boy. The gene for "black fur" is actually a gene that increases melanin. The color or pattern underneath is still there, just made super dark.
Also, in both animals and people, there is no true black, only different amounts of dark brown, because melanin isn't black either.
A black coat can come from melanism (genetic mutation), which darkens existing fur while the underlying pattern remains
This also occurs with big cats like leopards or jaguars, you can see their patterns too just like with your sweet boy :) Some cats do just have black coats though
So, fun fact. All cats have stripes. Only some cats have distinction in the intensity of the pigment such that it can be noticed with the naked eye in a dark room, but it would be visible in bright light (as seen here) or under a scope.
Sometimes. Have several voids… the one that is triple black had no stripes. The tuxie had stripes. I wish they would have stayed because they looks SO COOOOL. He did grow out of them. 😭
Standard? No but melanistic tabbies are very very common among the void variants. My own Mr Enzo is a melanistic tabby as opposed to a 'true black void'. It's the domestic cat equivalent to a black leopard.
Issue? No. When my cat went missing I set up a bunch of night vision stuff and you'd be surprised how many voids are actually striped but you just can't see it.
I think somewhat common. I don't know if my kittens stripes are prominent enough to catch in a picture, but occasionally I'll notice some very faint stripes.
My boy used to also have them! (Not the best photo for seeing the stripes but look how dumb he looks lol) he’s older now and you can’t really see them most of the time, but they still appear if the sun hits just right ✨
yeah, that's normal! technically all cats have those because genetically all cats are tabbies (if you see a solid-colored cat, other than white**, it just means that the pattern ended up being the same or a very similar color to the base coat). usually in black and dark gray/brown cats in particular, you can't see it, but when they're kittens or when the light hits them the right way, then the pattern will show up like that
**white cats are a little different in that all white cats are genetically some other color because "white" is not a base coat color for a cat; white spotting is its own gene, but it can potentially cover the entire base coat which results in the cat having white fur. if you were to breed two white cats together, it's possible (albeit unlikely) to get absolutely zero white kittens because of that lol
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u/Recent-Hovercraft310 19h ago