The van coat pattern is essentially a bi-colour, however, the cat is mostly white with splashes of red or black between the ears and on the tail. The van colouration is most widely recognised in the Turkish van but can be found in mixed breed cats as well. The smoke occurs due to a combination of the inhibitor gene which produces a white undercoat. The fur on his body is a cream color compared to almost white on Norman. The photo below is my own two Tonkinese cats, Norman on the left is a seal Tonkinese and Calvin on the right is a mink. The genetic code for the Tonkinese is cs/cb Once again, this pattern is only found in the Tonkinese which also makes it relatively rare. Seal has the characteristic appearance of the Siamese coat, solid has no points and mink is a blend of the Burmese/Siamese coat pattern. The Tonkinese is a cross between the Burmese and Siamese and three patterns seal, mink and solid. This coloration is most prominent on the chocolate (champagne) Burmese and brown (sable) Burmese. The gene responsible is known as cb, the lower case letters tell us that it is a recessive gene. The Burmese cat has a slight variation of the pointed gene, they still have points on the extremities, but the body is darker. Therefore both the mother and father must carry the cs gene for it to be passed on. The gene responsible for the Siamese coloration is known as cs and is recessive. This unusual coat pattern is caused by a gene modifier that prevents the expression of the coat color on warmer parts of the body. The pointed colour is also found in other cat breeds as well as mixed-breed cats. The Siamese is the most well known of the pointed breeds, with its characteristic dark points on a light background. The non-agouti cinnamon and fawn colors are seen most often in the Oriental and British Shorthair. Fawnįawn is dilute of cinnamon (above) and resembles the lilac coat color, but is lighter. The cinnamon coat is a warm-brown shade compared to the rich brown of the chocolate color and is produced by a second recessive allele (variation of a gene) of B (black) which causes an elongation of the pigment granule and is denoted by the symbol b l. The coat color is a pale grey with a rich pink tone. It is seen most frequently in purebred cats, especially the Burmese, Oriental and British shorthair. Lilac is dilute chocolate and bears the same relationship to brown as blue does to black. Since the B gene is dominant over the locus, cats heterozygous for it ( B/b or B/b l genotype), carry chocolate or cinnamon gene but it cannot be recognized based on phenotype. The chocolate (b) allele is dominant over the cinnamon (b l) allele. Two mutations of the B gene have been identified, b (brown or chocolate) and b l (light brown or cinnamon). Chocolate is frequently referred to as a rare color, but it is quite common in purebred cats, especially Orientals and British Shorthairs. The brown coat color ( b) is a variation of black ( B) coat color and is caused by a mutation that leads to reduced amounts of black pigment which causes them to appear brown and is recessive to black. You can view more beautiful pictures of brown cats in our article “ Why are brown cats rare?“. The British Blue, Russian Blue, Korat and Nebelung are the most well-known breeds with blue coats, but the color can also occur in mixed-breed cats. Black and red are dominant, and therefore only one copy of the gene is needed for the cat to show these colors.įirst, let’s look at relatively rare colors:īlue (grey) is dilute black, the color is chemically black (eumelanin), but melanin granules clump in the hair shaft resulting in colorless areas which allow more light to pass through the hair and lightening the color. Every other coat color is a deviation of those two colors. There are only two true colors in cats, black and red.A dominant gene overrides a recessive gene, and two copies of a recessive gene must be present for that trait to develop. Genes come in pairs, one from the mother and one from the father, and can be dominant or recessive.Each chromosome DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), which contains the instructions an organism needs to develop, live and reproduce.Cats have 19 pairs of chromosomes, which are inherited from the mother and father. ![]() Before we look at our beautiful selection of rare cat colors and patterns, let’s review a few interesting facts about cat genetics: This explains why some cat colors and patterns are rare while others are fairly common. Cats come in a huge range of cat colors and patterns, which is controlled by genes, gene modifiers, gender and even temperature in pointed cats.
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