What are Points ?

A cat has points if

• It has a mask on its face, the mask is darker coloured then the rest of the head.
• The ears are darker coloured in the same colour like the mask.
• The legs are darker coloured in the same colour like the mask.
• The tail is darker coloured in the same colour like the mask.
• The body has a lighter colour than the point colour.

Well known are the Siamese points. There the body is almost white (off white) while the points can be of various colours, blue - blue pointed, seal - seal pointed, tortie - tortie pointed, lilac tabby - lilac tabbypoint, etc. Cats with siamese pattern have blue eyes.
You find this pattern of course in the Siamese and in their longhair version the Balinese - note the name Balinese is not because the cats are originating from Bali, it is an artificial name.

You find the pattern also in the Colourpoint Persians and Exotic - in some federations those Persian cats are called Himalayan, in older times they have been called Khmer.

You can also find the siamese pattern in the Rex, then they are often called Si-Rex.

Also Birman cats are pointed cats. Besides their points their white gloves are characteristique for this breed.

And recently you find this pattern also in the Colourpoint British.

Also Burmese cats are pointed cats. But the difference in colour between the point colour and the body colour is only gradually, the body colour is the same colour like the points which show slightly a darker shade.

A Tonkinese pattern can be seen inbetween those two, but the contrast between the points and the body colour is clearly to be seen, the body itself is not off white it has the same colour tone like the points but lighter. Their eye colour is that of green water, it is called aquamarine. Well known are the Tonkinese themselves, a shorthaired breed. A speciality of the Tonkinses is that they are heterozygous, a cross breeding between Siamese and Burmese, and therefore you'll find also Siamese and Burmese pointed cats in their litter.

How can this theoretical knowledge be used for the breeding practice ?

You want to breed Colourpoint Persians

Example 1
You have already a colourpoint Persian female and want to get colourpoint tabby point kittens.
You can go in two different ways:
- You use a colourpoint tabby point stud male.
- You use a tabby stud male which carries the colourpoint gene cs.

Let's assume You have a sealpoint Persian female: aa B- cscs D- oo tbtb
We omit the combinations "ii" (our female is a non-silver point) and "ss" (we will deal with this in a later example, when we have a look at the Ragdolls). For the underlying tabby pattern we assume tabby blotched.

Case 1:
We use a red colourpoint tabby point stud male: A- B- cscs D- OY tbtb
To make our table easier we assume that the male carries also tbtb.

Case 2:
We use a blue tabby stud male which carries the colourpoint gene cs: A- B- Ccs dd tbtb
To make our table easier we omit the combinations "ii", "oo" and "ss" as they are not relevant for the colour - but note, that they are present of course - and we assume that the male is tabby blotched and therefor carries tbtb.

Our female is still the same: aa B- cscs D- tbtb
We omit here also the combinations "ii", "oo" and "ss" as they are not relevant for the colour.

As you can see on both tables in some cases we are not able to decide the colour clearly, because we didn't know the full code of the parents - that's indicated by the "-".
In practice you use these tables to derive backwards the encoding of the parents. Once you have determined the colour of the kittens, you can fill out more parts of the table and deduct backwards some more parts of the encoding of the parents.

In the second table you can see another phenomenon, all non-colourpoints are colourpoint carriers, so called Colourpoint Hybrids - from outside they don't show points but inside they carry them. Such Hybrids are very often used in breeding programs - see our example 3.

Example 3

As you know it is still a problem with the Colourpoints that they are not so typy as their non-pointed collegues. How can be improved that they get shorter noses ?
A very common breeding practice is to use solid (=non-pointed and non-colourpoint carriers) coloured cats because they are more typy and to mate them with colourpoints. The improvement in type already in the 1st generation is obvious.
And from this litter, which are all Colourpoint Hybrids the best one is kept and used for further breeding.
A common practice is to breed Colourpoints from two Hybrids.
But note the eye colour of the Hybrids can be lighter orange and the blue eye colour of the Colourpoints bred from two hybrids might be faded. Sometimes also white cats with blue eyes are used - but only use cats with deep blue eye colour and which are not deaf.

What's about the Ragdolls ?

The Ragdolls are also pointed cats. Their genetic encoding looks like this:

Bicolour and mitted Ragdolls also must show white feet, which are caused by another gene, the so called gloving gene (we will deal with it later).
You find them mostly in the four colours seal, blue, chocolate and lilac, you have to add "BB" or "Bb" for the seal/blue and "bb" for the chocolate/lilac.
If they are non-diluted you add "DD" or "Dd" - seal and chocolate, and for the diluted you add "dd" - blue and lilac.

If you breed Ragdolls you need all 3 varieties, Bicolour, Mitted and Colourpoint. You should not cross two Bicolours as you could produce Vans which are undesirable because they have too much white.

Example 4:
We cross a bicolour chocolate Ragdoll with a mitted lilac Ragdoll.

If you want to know which Siamese and Burmese colours are possible klick here.

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Last modified on  99-02-24