There are 6 main coat colours and patterns in cats. They are Solid, Parti-colour, Bi-colour, Tabby, Shaded/Smoke and Colourpoint. We will be looking at each one by one. In this edition, let’s focus on Solids.
A Solid colour means that a cat has only one colour all over its body. Not even a tiny part has any other colour anywhere on the body. There is no pattern on the body either. There are 9 colours found in solid cats: White, Red, Black, Chocolate, Cinnamon, Cream, Blue, Lilac and Fawn. In the cat colour terminology, amber colour is called red and grey colour is called blue. Out of these, White, Red, Black, Chocolate and Cinnamon are dominant colours, while Cream, Blue, Lilac and Fawn are recessive colours.
What this means, is that if you breed a solid black cat with a solid blue (grey) cat, the kittens will all be solid black in colour. Because black is dominant and blue is recessive, black will take over and the kittens will be black. If you want a kitten with a recessive colour, you need to ensure both its parents have recessive colours. If even one parent has any dominant colour, that colour will come in the kittens too.
Interestingly, even among the dominant colours, some are more dominant than others. White is the most dominant, Red is a little less, and so on, till Cinnamon which is the least dominant (among the dominant colours). If you look at the line where all 9 colours are listed, white is the most dominant and each successive colour is relatively less dominant, until we get to fawn, which is the least dominant colour of all. So if you breed a solid white cat with a cat of any other colour or pattern, you will end up with allwhite kittens.