American Wirehair coat colors and patterns
The palette is the American Shorthair's, near-identical in the registries' own descriptions. What differs is the SHOW STRUCTURE: CFA judges this breed's colors in three broad buckets where the American Shorthair carries roughly 45 classes. The founding tom's own color is stated differently by CFA's own different pages, so we attribute rather than pick. The genetics are the real color story here. The wirehair mutation is dominant with incomplete, variable expression (CFA's own framing). It has been molecularly EXCLUDED as the Sphynx/Devon Rex KRT71 mutations and the Selkirk Rex variant (Gandolfi 2010 and 2013, both read in full). The causal gene itself remains unidentified: a genuinely open case, stated at exactly that limit.
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The color palette
Calico over wire (the famous look)
Silver tabby
Brown tabby
Solid white
The American Wirehair in color
Royalty-free photos (Wikimedia Commons), full credits on the breed profile.
What the standard says
The palette is the American Shorthair's, near-identical in the registries' own descriptions. What differs is the SHOW STRUCTURE: CFA judges this breed's colors in three broad buckets where the American Shorthair carries roughly 45 classes. The founding tom's own color is stated differently by CFA's own different pages, so we attribute rather than pick. The genetics are the real color story here. The wirehair mutation is dominant with incomplete, variable expression (CFA's own framing). It has been molecularly EXCLUDED as the Sphynx/Devon Rex KRT71 mutations and the Selkirk Rex variant (Gandolfi 2010 and 2013, both read in full). The causal gene itself remains unidentified: a genuinely open case, stated at exactly that limit.
