Snowgum Siberian Cat Colours

Siberian cats come in a wide variety of colours. Here at snowgum we focus on breeding browns, goldens and silvers and occasionally blues. Some of our kittens will be "with white" and some "high white" but most will be without white. We now have the genes to produce reds and torties which will be a fun change for us. Our kittens will all have green/gold eyes (though all kitten's eyes start out blue).

This page is intended to help you understand what we mean by the different colour names. It is not a full listing of what is possible for a Siberian cat, it just lists some of the beautiful kittens we have had so far!. It is worth noting that Siberian coats can change dramatically with age, often the markings can fade and the coats get lighter in colour.

Like all the pictures on our site, the photos on this page are either pictures of our breeding cats or pictures of kittens we have bred. All photos have been taken by us.

Patterns

Siberian cats can have mackerel (striped), classic (blotched), spotted (the stripes on their sides are broken up into spots) or shaded tabby patterns (where the pattern is faded out- this can occur in goldens and silvers). All of these patterns will have the tabby "M" on their forehead, stripes on their legs and spots on their tummies. They can also be solid colours (i.e. no tabby pattern or rather their genetic pattern is hidden or masked by their solid colour) like black or blue. Solid colours combined with the silver gene result in "smokes".

Siberians do also come in a pointed pattern like the Siamese or Birman markings- these cats will have a pale body and colour only on their faces and legs and tail. They also have blue eyes. These Siberians are nick named "Neva Masquerades".

Here are some pictures of the mackerel, classic, spotted, smoke and shaded Siberians. Classics are rarer as they are genetically recessive. Shaded tabbies are also less common than the other patterns.

Brown (Black) tabbies

Brown tabbies (also called Black tabbies depending on the registry) are for me the ultimate Siberian cat. They have the wild forest cat look and you can really imagine them living out in the forest hunting their prey! Browns come in a variety of shades from cool or dark browns through to pale browns and warm browns that verge on gold. These colours tend to do the best on the show bench due to their wild look (and often they tend to have better type than other colours).

For pictures of fully grown brown tabbies please see Titan (warm brown) and Meadow (also warm brown but verging on gold) and Astra (brown spotted tabby with white) on the Our Siberian Cats page and then click on their pictures to see their photo galleries.

Golden Tabbies

Golden Siberians really have an amazing colour. They really do shimmer like gold and are incredibly eye catching. They are difficult to breed as the genetics of the colour is not yet fully understood. They differ to a golden Persian and are often a brighter gold with a pink nose leather and black paw pads.

In TICA (where we register) they do not yet recognise any tabby patterns other than shaded in the goldens, as such our goldens will be registered either as golden shaded or as brown tabbies depending on how strong their pattern is. Other registries like FIFe recognise the tabby patterns in the golden colour.

Just like in the browns, there is a wide range of shades in the goldens. These range from pale straw colour through to a deep apricot colour.

For pictures of fully grown golden Siberians please see Delta (black golden classic), Trotskiy (black golden shaded) and Penny (black golden mackerel) on the Our Siberian Cats page and then click on their pictures to see their photo galleries.

Silver tabbies

Silvers can come in all varieties of the tabby patterns. The silver colour occurs when the Inhibitor gene strips the colour at the base of the hair shaft leaving it white. As such, the cat is left with a white undercoat and colour only further down the hair shaft. Depending on how far down the shaft the colour remains, the cat can be either a tabby pattern or shaded. Most silvers are Black-silver meaning they are a brown (also called black) tabby with the inhibitor so they appear to be white with black tips giving a silver look. You can however also have blue silvers, red silvers and cream silvers :-) There is a wide variation in the silver colouring from dark black silvers to very pale silvers. Often with the silvers we get a little gold "tarnishing" in the coat. This is just the golden genes showing through the silver. Sometimes there is a small amount and other times its very obvious- it can be very beautiful when they have a noticeable amount of gold on their pale silver coats.

For pictures of fully grown silver tabbies please see Indiana (black silver classic with white), Sebastian (Black silver spotted), Karina (black silver shaded tortie), and Frostie (black silver shaded) on the Our Siberian Cats page and then click on their pictures to see their photo galleries.

Blue and cream tabbies

Blue and Cream colours are the result of the "dilute" modifier gene. Dilute is recessive so we only have these colours occasionally. Blue is kind of bluey grey-ish colour similar to a koala and is the result of dilute genes on a brown (black) tabby coat. Cream is the dilute genes on a red coat!

For pictures of fully grown blue tabbies please see Georgie (blue mackerel tabby) on the Our Siberian Cats page and then click on her picture to see her photo gallery.

Red and tortie tabbies

We now have a beautiful tortie girl so we can produce red kittens (males) and tortie tabby kittens. Tortie tabbies (also known as "Torbies") have patches of red through a brown, blue or silver tabby coat. The patches can be of any size, number and placement. Torties are almost always females and their owners often claim they are "naughty torties" :-)

For pictures of fully grown tortie tabbies please see Karina (black silver tortie tabby) on the Our Siberian Cats page and then click on her picture to see her photo gallery. It is worth noting that the in a silver tortie the red patches look more subdued than when there is no silver present.

Solids (Selfs)

It is possible to get solid or "self" colours in the Siberian. By this we mean no tabby pattern showing, just solid black, solid blue, solid red or solid white. The cat will still genetically have a tabby pattern but it is overlaid by a solid colour so the pattern is not seen. If you add the silver Inhibitor gene to a solid colour you end up with smokes. We haven't yet had a solid black or blue kitten but we have had a couple of black smokes so we only have pictures of smokes in this section.

With White and High White/Bicolour

What do we mean when we say "with white" or "and white"? This means that the coat will have some areas of white- often the bibs and socks but the white can technically be anywhere on the coat. "High white" or "bicolour" means lots of white! If they have white around their nose, their nose leather will be bright pink. If it is over their toes, those toes will also be bright pink! Very cute indeed!

It is worth noting that the placement and amount of white varies from cat to cat though it can often be inherited in a similar distribution to a parent who is with white.

For pictures of fully grown cats with white see Indiana (Black silver classic with white) and Astra (Brown spotted tabby high white) on the Our Siberian Cats page and then click on their pictures to see their photo galleries.