Cat coat colors and patterns
A litter of Siamese has just been born, and the kittens are white. Completely white. The breeder isn't worried for a second: within three weeks, the mask, ears and paws will have started to darken.
A cat's coat isn't a color, it's a mechanism. A pigment, one gene that decides where it lands, another that lightens it, a third that wipes it away in patches. Learn these few rules and you'll be able to read any cat at first glance, and even guess what its parents passed down without showing it themselves.
By Nora · The storytellerThe patterns
How the color spreads across the body and along each hair.
The base colors
Every pigment comes in a dense version and a diluted one. The dilution gene lightens the color without changing it: black becomes blue, red becomes cream.
Dominant, recessive: why two black cats can have a blue kitten
It's the question we get asked most often, and the answer fits in one word: recessive. A recessive gene only shows if the cat receives TWO copies, one from each parent. Two black cats can therefore each carry, without showing it, one copy of the dilution gene. The day their two copies meet, the kitten is born blue. The parents never were, and never will be.
And this is where it gets interesting: most of the most sought-after coats are recessive. That's exactly why they're rare, and why a breeder can't produce them on demand.
| Trait | Inheritance | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Dilution (black → blue, red → cream) | Recessive | Both copies are needed. Two dense-colored cats can produce a diluted kitten. |
| Solid, no markings (non-agouti) | Recessive | The tabby pattern is dominant: a solid cat always carries it, hidden. |
| Colorpoint (mask and extremities) | Recessive | Two fully colored parents can produce a colorpoint kitten if they both carry it. |
| Chocolate and cinnamon | Recessive | Black wins over them. A black cat can carry them without showing them. |
| Solid white | Dominant | It masks absolutely everything else: a white cat can be genetically a red tabby. |
| White spotting (bicolor, van) | Dominant | A single copy is enough for white to appear. |
| Red | Carried on the X chromosome | It's what makes tortoiseshell cats almost always female. |
White cats: one thing you need to know
Solid white doesn't just mask the other colors: the gene that produces it also affects the development of the inner ear. Deafness, especially in blue-eyed white cats, is a well-established fact, and it can affect just one ear. A deaf white cat does perfectly well, as long as you know and keep them indoors: they can't hear cars coming.
Frequently asked questions
Our sources
One question remains that no genetics table can answer: what coat does YOUR cat wear? Many of you write in thinking you have an ordinary tabby, only to find out it's a classic tabby, or a ticked one. Look at their forehead: the M is there, it always is.
Did a coat catch your eye?Filter the breeds by personality, size and budget, then compare them.