Colour Breeding Chart

Question
I have bred a silver tabby and white persian dam with a cream and white male.  What are my possibilities? and is there a chart with the silver factor included that will help me determine what I can expect?  re: colour and sex of kittens
I appreciate any help you can offer.
thanks
Maureen

Answer
Maureen,

I do not like color charts, as I think it makes more sense to understand the genetics. There used to be a very complicated color chart out there, but it is currently outdated.  As they discover new colors in cats, the genetics tend to get superceded by newer theories.

Anyway, if you divide the problem into pieces, it is not so hard.

Silver:  The silver system (gene) is a dominant which provides silvery white undercoat and cools down the pigment color (e.g. brown tabby becomes silver tabby, because the brownish pigment cools down to a black pigment. If the agouti gene (which allows black derived pigmentation to show tabby pattern) is not turned on, you get a smoke. As long as one parent carries the silver gene, you can get silvers.  If your female is homozygous for silver, all kittens in the litter will be silvers or smokes. If the female is heterozygous for silver, some of the kittens will be silver or smoke and some will not.

Agouti: this is another dominant.  If the female is homozygous for agouti, all kittens will express tabby pattern in black based colors (i.e. silver or brown tabby, chololate or chocolate silver, blue or blue silver tabby, lilac or lilac silver tabby, cinnamon or cinnamon silver tabby, fawn or fawn silver tabby) If the female is heterozygous, some of the kittens will express tabby pattern in the black based colors, whereas some will not. The fun in this is that with red based colors (red or red silver, cream or cream silver) tabby pattern may express with or without the agouti gene.

Cream: this is the dilute of red. Dilute is a dominant, so the male must have dilute on both sides. dilute or red is cream, dilute of black is blue, dilute of chocolate is lilac, and dilute of cinnamon is fawn.  Unless the female carries dilute, the kittens will not be dilutes, but will be dilute carriers.

Sex linked red: This is a dominant. The color of the cat is either black derived or red derived or both (but only in females). The color of the cat is carries on the X (female) chromosome on that part of the chromosome that is missing in the Y (male) chromosome.

So female kittens can be tortoiseshell (black and red), whereas male kitten can be black.

With White: Another dominant, whether or not kittens will have the with white pattern depends on whether or not one or the other or both sire & dam are homozygous or heterozygous for the with white pattern.

So, you understand why this gets complicated.  You need to know the colors of the parents and sometimes grandparents to understand homozygosity vs. heterozygosity of the dominants and whether the silver tabby/white is carrying dilute.

So, in general female kitten may be expected to be silver patched tabby (torbie) with white, silver patched tabby with no white, brown patched tabby with white or brown patched tabby with no white, blue silver patched tabby (torbie) with white or blue silver patched tabby (torbie) with no white, or calico smoke or tortoiseshell smoke or dilute calico smoke or blue-cream smoke. Or any of the above with no silver or smoke.

Male kittens may be expected to be silver tabby with white or silver tabby with no white, blue silver tabby with white or blue silver tabby with no white, or black smoke with white or black smoke with no white, or blue smoke with white or blue smoke with no white, or any of these with no silver or smoke.

You can also do genetic testing for most feline coat color genes/alleles.

As I said this is a rather complicated breeding from a color and pattern perspective, so figuring out what the kittens will be may wait until they are born. Even worse, with some of the silver/smoke colors it may take some months for the silver/smoke to express!!!!!!

I am happy to entertain follow ups as this is a lot of information to digest in one sitting.

Best regards... Norm.



So in all, you can get