Kitten Guides

British Shorthair Colours Explained

Most people meet the British Shorthair as the plush grey cat from the advertisements, and are then surprised to discover the breed comes in more colours than almost any other. The naming can be baffling — a grey cat is called blue, a grey-pink cat is called lilac, and a cat that looks brown might be chocolate, cinnamon or fawn depending on a single gene. This guide untangles it.

The Three Base Colours

Nearly every British Shorthair colour begins with one of three pigments, and it helps to think of them as a ladder rather than a list. Each step down the ladder is progressively warmer and lighter.

• Black. The original. A good black British Shorthair is dense and even to the roots, with no rusty cast. Two of our current kittens are black.
• Chocolate. A rich, warm brown, rather than a faded black. It takes deliberate breeding to produce, which is why it is far less common than blue. Prada is one of ours.
• Cinnamon. The rarest of the three: a light, warm reddish-brown, quite unlike chocolate when the two are side by side. Our stud Aris is cinnamon, and we have written about the colour at length in our guide to the cinnamon British Shorthair.

What the Dilution Gene Does

This is the single idea that makes the whole colour chart fall into place. A separate gene, called dilution, does not change which pigment a cat has; it changes how densely that pigment is packed into each hair. Loosely packed pigment scatters light, and the coat reads as a softer, paler version of the same colour.

So each base colour has a diluted partner, and the pairs run like this:

• Black dilutes to blue. The famous British Shorthair grey. Janine is blue.
• Chocolate dilutes to lilac. A pale, frosted grey with a distinctly warm pink cast. Lila and Barbie are both lilac.
• Cinnamon dilutes to fawn. The palest of all, a soft warm beige, and among the rarest colours in the breed.

Dilution is recessive, which means a kitten must inherit it from both parents to show it. Two blue cats, having no undiluted copy to pass on, can therefore only produce blue or other diluted kittens. Two black cats, on the other hand, may each quietly carry dilution and produce a blue kitten that appears to come from nowhere.

Why Blue Is the One Everybody Knows

Blue became the face of the breed for historical reasons rather than genetic ones. It was the colour the early breed pioneers concentrated on, it is the colour that wins in the show ring, and it is the colour every advertisement has used since. A century of selection for that one colour also refined the round head and dense coat people picture when they think of a British Shorthair, so blue cats often show the breed type at its most exaggerated.

That popularity does not make blue better. It makes it familiar. Temperament, health testing and how a kitten has been raised matter enormously more than colour, and any breeder who sells you a colour before they sell you a cat is worth a second look. Our guide to choosing an ethical breeder covers the warning signs.

Red, Cream and the Torties

Red — always called red, never ginger, in the show world — is carried on the X chromosome, which gives the colour its unusual behaviour. Cream is its diluted form.

Because the gene sits on the X chromosome, a female with two X chromosomes can carry red on one and a base colour on the other, and express both at once in patches. That is a tortoiseshell, or tortie. It is also why torties are almost always female. Our Amber is a chocolate tortie, which is chocolate and red together. A diluted tortie, lilac and cream, is usually called a blue-cream or lilac-cream depending on the base.

Patterns, Not Colours

Everything above describes pigment. Pattern is a separate question, and any of those colours can appear in any of these forms.

• Self, or solid. One even colour from nose to tail, with no markings at all. This is what most people picture, and it is harder to achieve well than it sounds.
• Tabby. Classic (the blotched, swirled pattern), mackerel (fine vertical stripes), spotted, or ticked. Every cat carries a tabby pattern underneath; in a self cat it is simply masked.
• Bicolour and van. Colour combined with white, in varying proportions, from a small white bib up to a mostly white cat with colour confined to the head and tail.
• Smoke, shaded and tipped. A silver undercoat beneath a coloured top, which produces a striking shimmer as the cat moves. The amount of colour along each hair decides which of the three it is.
• Colourpoint. A pale body with darker face, ears, legs and tail, and blue eyes — the Siamese pattern, introduced into the breed deliberately. Recognised and shown, though it is not what most buyers picture when they think of the breed.

Eye Colour Follows Coat Colour

Eye colour is not independent. Most self British Shorthairs have deep copper or orange eyes, and depth of colour is something breeders select for over generations. Silver tabbies and tipped cats often have green or hazel eyes instead, colourpoints always have blue, and a white cat may have blue, copper, or one of each. Kittens are born with the blue eyes all kittens have, and the adult colour arrives gradually over the first few months, so a young kitten’s eyes tell you very little.

Does Colour Affect Price?

It usually does, and it is worth understanding why. The rarer colours — cinnamon, fawn, and the well-bred chocolates and lilacs — take more generations and more careful pairing to produce, so fewer exist and they tend to cost more than blue. That is a reflection of scarcity and of the work behind the litter, not of quality. A rare colour from a careless breeder is worth considerably less than a blue from a good one.

Our honest advice is to choose the kitten rather than the colour, and to tell your breeder what you are hoping for so they can be straight with you about timing. Colour preferences are entirely reasonable. Waiting for the right kitten in that colour is usually better than compromising on where it comes from.

The Colours We Breed

Between our queens and our stud we work with chocolate, lilac, blue, chocolate tortie, cinnamon and black. We breed to demand rather than continuously, so not every colour is available at any given moment, and we would always rather tell you to wait than sell you the wrong kitten. You can see who is available now at any time.