From Cheetah Spots to Kitty's Stripes: The Genetics of Cat Coats: After years of studying how cats get their color, researchers have pinpointed an elusive gene underlying spots on cheetahs, stripes in house cats and patterns across the feline world. "It's something we've been curious about for a long time," said geneticist Stephen O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute. "We've known just three genes were involved, but nobody knew what the genes were."