First a short introduction. Although the history of the Siamese cat in the West is somewhat vague, it would seem with some certainty that a certain Mrs Vyvyan of Dover, UK acquired some of the first Siamese cats in the West. Of course, they came from Siam (now Thailand) ostensibly from the King’s Palace …
This is another infographic which I hope summarises what is going on when a cat coat becomes pale and washed out. A lot of people like the appearance. All the grey cats are a washed out black. The most famous grey purebred cat is the British Blue. The Russian Blue is also a dilute black.
The blue-cream cat coat is a dilute version of the black-red cat coat which describes the tortoiseshell coat so the blue-cream coat is a dilute tortoiseshell. Blue is a dilute black. It is blue-grey. Grey cats are called ‘blue cats’ by the cat fancy as you probably know in recognition of the slight blue …
You know that in the cat fancy grey cats are called blue cats. The best known is the ‘Blue British Shorthair’. This is a grey-furred cat. Grey fur is caused by the presence of the dilution gene. It causes the melanin pigment clumps in each hair strand to be dispersed with gaps as shown …
As you might well imagine, the reason why tortoiseshell cats are nearly always female is to do with the genetics and how the genes that dictate the coat colour and pattern are linked to the sex of the cat. Female mammals have 2 X chromosomes while males have one X and one Y chromosome. …
Dilution refers to making a colour lighter as if mixing it with white. When black is made lighter is becomes a pale or slate grey. Sarah Hartwell refers to it as ‘blue dilution’. Grey is not blue but there is a slight bluish tinge to the grey cat coat. The cat fancy prefers to …
In truth, the glamorous, pedigree, purebred Russian Blue is a black moggy from Russia. I am referring to the original cat, wandering around the streets of Archangel which is on the coast not too far from Murmansk which itself is close to the north of Finland. We are looking at a very cold landscape …
The term ‘dilute’ refers to the weakening of the colours of a cat’s coat as if watered down. The colours are paler. Cat breeders can deliberately create this colour by selective breeding of pedigree cats. When the cat coat’s color is diluted it is due to the presence of two mutant recessive d alleles …
