Dalmation Stone for #caturday

There's an old saying about "Getting two birds with one stone" — which refers to accomplishing two goals with one action. So, with this Dalmation Stone, I am writing about minerals while fulfilling yet another #caturday post.

Most animal lovers are probably familiar with the Dalmation dog breed, but have you ever seen a Dalmation cat? This little figure is called a "totem" and is intended to be collected or carried (by those with an affinity to cats) for purposes of comfort, protection, good fortune, or spiritual reasons.

Dalmation Stone has sometimes in the past been incorrectly called "Dalmation Jasper," but this stone is not a jasper. I have listed two sites in the "Sources" at the bottom of this article that have independently had a sample of Dalmation Stone analyzed by scientific means including X-Ray Diffraction, Raman Spectroscopy, microscopic examination, and other scientific tests. The consensus from these independent labs is that:

the black material is the mineral arfvedsonite, an amphibole similar to hornblende, with a composition of Na₃(Fe,Mg)₄FeSi₈O₂₂(F,OH)₂. The white material is a mixture of the mineral albite, a plagioclase feldspar with a composition of Na(AlSi₃O₈), and lesser amounts of quartz (SiO₂).

So, Dalmation Stone is composed of black arfvedsonite embedded in white/creamy albite with a small amount of quartz. By contrast, a true jasper is composed mostly of quartz or chalcedony with impurities that [usually] give it more of a uniform color.

With my twisted sense-of-humor, I had to chuckle when I found that one of the constituent minerals of this rock is arfvedsonite, as the word "Arf" is often an onomatopoeic word describing the bark of a small dog. And, this is, after all, Dalmation Stone... 😂

With the name Dalmation Stone, I fully expected that it was a substance that originated in Dalmatia, which is part of present-day Croatia, on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea across from Italy. However, the stone is commonly found in Chihuahua, Mexico, and was given its name because of its similar splotches of dark-on-light, like the Dalmation breed of dog! And again with the humor — Dalmation Stone, named for the dog breed, is found in Chihuahua, a locale that is the namesake of another dog breed. Ya can't make this stuff up... 😆

So, now you have seen a Dalmation Cat, and on #caturday 😁