Coats of many colours

Coat colours and patterns in the Norwegian Forest Cat

The face of a silver tortie tabby and white kitten - she has
red, black, white and silver colours in her coat

At cat shows, NFCs get no points for colour, although a few colours are not allowed (eg chocolate, lilac or Siamese pointing).  However it is interesting to be able to understand what colours might appear from a particular mating.

All cats have eight pairs of genes that affect how their coats look in terms of colour and pattern. One gene from each pair comes from the cat’s mother, and the other from the cat’s father. Some genes dominate over others.  For any recessive gene to “work” it has to be doubled up - e.g. a cat with one (recessive) dilute and one (dominant) non dilute gene will not look dilute. This article ignores the “new colours” – amber and light amber, previously known as the “x” colours – as they are different, recently discovered and probably unique to NFCs.  I have not worked with amber or light amber as I don't particularly like them, but I have had kittens of all other possible colour combinations over the years.

1. Black, which is the base colour

All cats are really black cats in disguise!  The other genes, 2-8, listed below modify appearance.  

Hey, I'm unmodified!  So I look black all over.  And I'm four weeks old, so there.

2. Orange or not Orange?

Although we call the colour red, genetically it is given the code O for orange (or a small o for not orange). O is a sex linked gene. It attaches itself to the X chromosome. Males are XY and females are XX. So if a male is red, then when he has a daughter he always passes on his X chromosome to her, and hence always passes on his O gene. That’s why the female kittens from red studs invariably have some red fur.

The kitten on the left is a red and white girl fathered by a tortie mother
and a red  tabby and white father

A female with one red gene will be a tortie. A female with two red genes (which she has to get one from her father and one from her mother) will be red.

Red has a complication in that the way the pigment works on the cat hair means there is always a tabby pattern evident. Hence it is difficult to tell visually if a red or cream cat is tabby or not.

A variety of Vieuxtemps kittens including a cream tabby boy, right - cream is the
dilute version of red.  (The funny little white one from a different, younger, litter!)

3. Dilute or non dilute?

The red or black is affected by the dilute gene to produce cream or blue respectively. Dilute is recessive to full colour. So if you have a dilute cat, both genes on this locus must be dilute. If you have a full colour cat, it may be carrying one dilute gene. If a full colour cat had a dilute parent, it MUST carry a dilute gene. If a cat doesn’t carry a dilute gene, then mating it with a dilute cat will never produce dilute kittens. However dilute genes can be carried from quite a long way back in the pedigree. D = dense, d= dilute. So DD and D cats do not look dilute – dd cats do look dilute.

Ragna, a dilute cat - she was a blue ticked tabby

4. The White Spotting Gene

Designated S and so called to distinguish it from the completely separate white masking gene – the spotting gene gives the Forest Cat white areas on its body. This can be completely variable, from a tiny white tip on the tail to nearly all white with just a few coloured blotches.  The white patches don't have to be actual spots! The typical look is white inverted V on nose and white paws and tummy. There are no rules as to where and how much white should appear. The spotting gene is dominant. Hence you cannot get a kitten with any white areas unless at least one parent has the white spotting gene.

This white queen (who clearly has the white masking gene, but we cannot see if she has the white spotting gene) has a brown tabby kitten, snoozing bottom right, who clearly has the white spotting gene giving him the white 'V' on his face typical of many NFCs.

5. The Inhibitor gene - silver/smoke or not?

The inhibitor gene I prevents pigment from colouring the bottom part of every hair shaft. Hence if you look at the roots of hair of a silver or smoke cat, they should be pure white. However there are many grades of silver, and as no-one tends to breed NFCs for colour (as colour has zero points in the Standard of Points) you do sometimes get very low-grade silvers where it is difficult to see. Some cats like this are wrongly registered but will later produce silver progeny with a non silver stud, which means they have to be re-registered correctly. Smoke and silver are the same, except for the fact that silver is tabby and smoke is solid colour. The inhibitor gene is dominant (as far as we know). Other forms of smoke –eg the very slight colour tipping of Chinchillas, are not found in NFCs.

Tarnishing – it is wrong of judges to punish unless as a point of dividing otherwise equally good cats. Silver and smoke can combine with any colour –eg red smoke, blue silver and so on. If speaking of a silver tabby cat, one is referring to the default black silver.

Vieuxtemps Rosa, silver tabby and white kitten aged eleven weeks

6. Tabby or non tabby?

Do not confuse the gene that says that a cat shows a tabby pattern or not with the gene that says which particular pattern the cat has (see 7 below).
Tabby is dominant over non tabby.  In genetics, the word Agouti is used for tabby and the gene has code A (tabby) a (non tabby).
A cat without the Agouti gene means it will appear solid coloured. Cats cannot carry the Agouti gene. So two solid cats can never have tabby offspring. Tabby cats can carry solid genes however, so two tabby cats can have solid offspring.
The effect of the Agouti gene on a black coat is to make the black brown. Hence, a brown tabby cat is genetically a black tabby (which is the term used in FIFe).

This brown tabby and white kitten, Vieuxstemps Snygging, is technically
black and white with added tabby!

7. What tabby pattern?

There are four patterns:
Classic(blotched)
Mackerel
Spotted
Ticked
All NFCs have a pair of tabby pattern genes, even if they do not have the gene that makes them a tabby cat. Sometimes “ghost” markings can be seen in solid coloured kittens, in some lights. The markings can always be seen in a red or cream cat, regardless whether or not it is tabby.
Spotted is actually classic or blotched, but with a broken pattern. In other breeds (such as Bengals) there are other spotted genes (eg rosettes, like leopards) and also the marble pattern, but not in NFCs.
Classic is recessive to mackerel, and mackerel is recessive to ticked. Ticked coats are sometimes known as “wild pattern” abroad as they are similar to the coat of a wild rabbit, hare, fox etc. There are no stripes or spots but instead each hair has several bands of contrasting colour, with the darkest colour at the tip.
There is some controversy over ticked tabby NFCs outside of Norway. Some people suspect that Somalis have been bred with NFCs to get this pattern. However going back to ticked novices, they were found in the Norwegian countryside the same as the other patterns. We do not know what is behind any of our Forest Cats but we do know that the Vikings travelled to places where there were ticked cats.

Silver tortie tabby girl showing classic tabby pattern

8. The White Masking Gene

You can think of the white masking gene as being a white overcoat on top of the cat’s normal colour. A white cat can be any other colour underneath the white. Eye colour is affected – eyes are blue, green, orange/yellow or blue plus one of the others(“odd eyed”). The eye colour inheritance seems completely random although blue eyes are associated with a slightly greater incidence of deafness. If a cat is solid white, it has at least one W gene, which is dominant. If the cat isn’t white, it must have two white w genes (ie non white masking). This gene is associated with deafness (but the majority of white kittens can hear). I used to specialise in white NFCs because I think they are so very beautiful, but I stopped using them for breeding as although very few of my kittens were deaf I just didn't want to breed deaf kittens.

Kyrrekatt Kohinoor, one of my very first Forest Cats
(photo by Kevin Reah)

If you are a novice breeder and need guidance about which colours are likely to appear out of any particular mating, you are welcome to contact Mary-Rose for help.

Tabby patterns in Norwegian Forest Cats

Norwegian Forest Cats come in almost every possible colour and also almost every possible pattern, and it also doesn’t matter how much white is on their coats. (However they NEVER have a pointed coat, ie a Siamese pattern). When an NFC coat is being evaluated it is the quality of the fur (which should be waterproof on top and woolly underneath), the shape of the coat (defined ruff etc) and the quantity (taking into account the season) that counts. I have noticed that sometimes people are not sure what “tabby” means – sometimes I say “what colour is your cat?” and they say “tabby”, meaning a brown tabby perhaps, but not realising that tabby has nothing to do with colour and everything to do with pattern. Hence this article.

The opposite of tabby is “solid” meaning that the cat has no pattern on its non-white areas of fur. If you’re not sure – look around the eyes. Unless the fur is white there, on a tabby cat you will see “eye make-up” lines regardless of which pattern they are. Because breeders pay attention to coat quality (vital as part of a cat that should be able to survive out of doors) pattern is more or less ignored, so you do get some individual cats or lines of NFCs where the pattern isn’t as clear as it would be in some other breeds. In addition, by the time the cat has a long adult coat, the pattern is more difficult to distinguish anyway, so it’s always easier to make a judgement about a kitten’s pattern than that of a longer-coated adult.

NFCs come in three or four different tabby patterns:

•    Classic- with sworls on the side, a double stripe down the back and striped legs(sometimes known as blotched tabby)
•      Mackerel- stripey all over with rings round the tail
•     Spotted- with spots on side and tummy, often considered to be a form of mackerel or classic tabby with the stripes broken up
•       Ticked- clear tabby markings only appear on the face, while the body has a darker stripe down the back and each hair has bands of colour known as "ticking", giving a very wild appearance. Many feral animals are ticked, including rabbits and foxes

In some other breeds (eg Bengals) there are other sorts of tabby pattern but the above are the only ones that occur in the NFC. Some patterns are “dominant” to others, meaning that if one parent has that pattern it is more likely to occur in the offspring. I will go into tabby inheritance later down the page as it’s a bit complicated. First let me introduce you to the patterns themselves. Remember, tabby is the pattern not the colour, so you can get red classic, silver ticked, blue mackerel and so on, but for my illustrations I have mostly chosen brown tabbies (known as black tabby in FIFe) as the pattern is easier to see on darker coats.

Mackerel Tabby

I would say that brown mac tabby and white is the most common colour/pattern combination in the NFC. Below is a kitten (Vieuxtemps Henry) and an adult (Dansbjergs Pelle Halelos) showing mackerel tabby pattern.

Vieuxtemps Henry

Dansbjergs Pelle Halelos

Classic Tabby

Below is a photo of a classic tabby kitten, Vieuxtemps Beowulf, while a mature stud cat, Champion Vieuxtemps Trulsofjarrah can be seen further down in a longer coat – the pattern is much clearer in the kitten where the coat is shorter. 

Vieuxtemps Beowulf

Champion Vieuxtemps TrulsofJarrah

Ticked Tabby

Ticked tabby is a bit different – the cat has the tabby markings you expect on the face, but the body and tail has no stripes or swirls, but each hair has several alternating bands of colour giving an overall “two-tone” sort of effect. With a brown ticked cat, the bands of colour are rich lighter brown and dark black-brown, alternating with the darkest colour at the tip. With blue ticked there are grey and beige bands, with red ticked, darker and lighter orange bands. The best known ticked breeds of cat are Abyssinian and Somali. For this reason, some people look down on ticked NFCs thinking that they are a hybrid between an NFC and a Somali. This may well be true, but because NFCs only became pedigree cats in 1977, before that they could and did mix with whatever cats they came across and some of these may have been Somalis. I have looked back into the pedigrees of my own ticked tabby NFCs and feel satisfied that no purposeful outcrosses were performed. Alternatively, you should remember that the Vikings travelled as far as North Africa where the ticked cats originate, and may have bought some back many centuries ago, as they did from various other countries. In my opinion ticked NFCs are in no way inferior to any others, and I particularly like the “wild” look the ticking gives them. The important thing is that they should not have the “sweet” expression of the Somali. Type and coat quality are important, not coat pattern. To those who “disapprove” of ticked tabbies, I would say – how do you know what is in the background of your own cats prior to 1977?  Below you can see a couple of photos of ticked tabby NFCs – Vieuxtemps Pumpernickel (top, with white) and Vieuxtemps Brannet (lower down, no white).

Vieuxtemps Pumpernickel

Vieuxtemps Brannet

      Spotted tabbies are classic or mackerel patterned but with broken lines resulting in the effect of spots. I once bred a kitten that was striped on one side and spotted on the other! This would have been awful if I was working with a breed where pattern counted, but as it doesn’t matter at all in NFCs it was simply rather quirky and charming.  Below is a kitten who had proper spots on both sides – Vieuxtemps Vilanelle, who went on to join the Smylee cattery.

Vieuxtemps Vilanelle

The Inheritance of Tabby Pattern

All cats (and other animals for that matter, including us) have pairs of genes that govern every aspect of their appearance, and of each pair, one gene is donated by the cat’s father and one by the mother. There are two separate pairs of genes affecting tabby pattern (as far as I know).

• The first is a A or a gene, which decides whether the cat is in fact a tabby cat or a solid colour (solid = non tabby, eg black and white). A stands for agouti which is another word for tabby. If a cat has two A genes it will definitely be tabby, and all its offspring will be tabby too, as A is dominant over a. If a cat has one A gene and one a gene then it will look tabby but could have non-tabby offspring with the right mate. If a cat has two a genes it will be solid, not tabby, and can only have tabby kittens with a tabby mate.
• The second pair of genes affecting tabby pattern decides what pattern the tabby will be. It could be mackerel, classic or ticked. Spotted is decided by other genes I think or may be a random polygenetic effect. As I said earlier, ticked is dominant. So if a cat has two ticked genes then all his or her offspring will be ticked (but the ticked pattern could be masked if that cat is also “aa” meaning solid coloured, or for that matter if it is completely white which masks everything – but that is a whole other topic!) If a tabby cat has one ticked gene and one mackerel gene, then it will look ticked but could produce mackerel offspring with the right mate. If a tabby cat has two mackerel genes and is mated with a classic tabby cat, then the mackerel will dominate meaning that all offspring will be mackerel tabby. If there are two tabby cats each with one mackerel and one classic tabby pattern gene, then both cats will look mackerel but could have classic offspring together.

Of my own cats, I discovered that Magnus (blue ticked tabby without white former stud cat) was “homozygous for tabby” meaning that he had two A genes and all his offspring had to be tabby (some hid this under the white masking gene though). He carried one classic gene (he had to as his father was classic tabby). Hence if mated with a cat with two mackerel genes, then he could have ticked or mackerel offspring. If mated with a queen with one mackerel and one classic gene, he could (and did) have ticked, classic and mackerel kittens.

Champion Magnus More og Romsdal, blue ticked tabby NFC

      My lovely Pelle was a mackerel tabby with a lot of white. Some of his kittens have been classic tabby, meaning that he must have one mackerel and one classic gene. Some kittens have also been solid colour (black and white) meaning that he must have one A gene and one a gene. Obviously you do get cases where there is so much white that it’s difficult to determine pattern. This happened with Dotty – it was quite a while before I could tell that she is in fact a ticked tabby, like her mother, Ragna.

      When you get red or cream kittens they always show a tabby pattern, even if they have two a genes. In fact it’s more or less impossible to say merely based on appearance if a red or cream cat is tabby or solid. This is due to the way the red pigment works. If two solid coloured cats (ie both having two a genes) have a red kitten then that kitten must be solid even if it looks tabby. Otherwise, you just have to assume that the kitten is tabby for registration purposes, and may never know for sure.

Vieuxtemps Valentine showing his red classic tabby pattern in his short kitten coat