Picture of a blue Abyssinian cat discussed

by Michael Broad · March 12, 2021

The slender athletic Abyssinian in the picture on the left of the montage below is blue and the image cat caught my eye. It is the same cat on the right, I believe. She is very elegant. Perhaps the cat is too slender for a typical Abyssinian? Perhaps this is because she is not yet fully developed; a subadult.

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Blue Abyssinian cat. Picture: MikeB from images from catcolours.com.

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I am used to seeing them with a more robust appearance. The CFA breed standard says that they should be ‘regal in appearance. The Abyssinian is lithe, hard and muscular’, which indicates to me a more robust body conformation.

But I love the cat’s appearance; very beautiful. And she is ‘blue’ in cat fancy language. It is bit tricky to see a genuine blue colour in the coat as it is more grey than blue. It is as if the usual rusty colour of the classic Abyssinian has been cancelled out by a genuine blue which makes grey.

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The CFA breed standard describes the blue coat of the Abyssinian as being ‘coat warm beige, ticked with slate blue, the extreme outer tip to be the darkest, with blush beige undercoat’. The end of the nose should be ‘old rose’ in colour! See below:

Old Rose colour. Image copyright free.

So for the Abyssinian blue means beige with some slate blue. Slate blue is like slate grey, right? The image below from W3 Schools shows light slate gray just for the record.

Light slate grey. Image: W3 Schools.

Abyssinian cat trivia: the first Abyssinian cats to arrive in the US were owned by Jane Cathcart of Orandell, New Jersey. They were called CH. Aluminium and Salt. They were probably ‘silvers’ according to Richard Gebhardt, a retired show judge and former president of the CFA. They were at a cat show in Boston in 1909. The next imports in the USA were in the 19230s, it is believed. The first recorded litter of Abyssinian cats born in the US was in 1935. The increased interest in the Abyssinian in the USA was important as the list of stud cats in the UK (1947-48) at the GCCF was a mere four cats ‘two of which were unproven’ (Gebhardt).

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