One interesting byproduct of trying to make shaded silvers is the occasional shaded golden. A shaded golden has all the things that you select for in a shaded program, lightness, clarity, lack of visible barring. but did not happen to get the silver allele. So, a shaded golden is to a shaded silver what a brown tabby is to a silver tabby, or a solid to a smoke. In each case, the former is homozygous for the non-silver allele i, and the latter has at least one copy of the silver allele I. Few Oriental Shorthairs are homozygous for the dominant silver allele.   I typically breed my silvers to non-silvers in my hunt for pattern clarity, type, and outcrosses. So I get a LOT of non-silver cats. Once in a blue-moon I get a cat that clearly would have been a nice shaded silver, if only it had been silver!

This particular girl, Synergy Suntali, born November 6, 2001, is shown here with a regular ebony ticked tabby kitten(a.k.a. brown ticked tabby or black ticked tabby, depending on registering body). Note the difference in color between the two. Picture taken Feb. 23, 2002.  Suntali's tail tip, eye, and nose liner, and paw pads are all black, but only the tips of other hairs on her body are black.  At this point she is too young and her coat too short to determine how good her color will be when she is grown, but at this age she is the most obviously golden Oriental I have had.  These pictures were taken with a flash, which washes the color out to some extent, but I think you can get the idea!

The little boy at the right of the middle picture and lrft on bottom is also heterozygous "ticked" pattern, not homozygous like Suntali.  You can tell this by the presence of some leg and tail striping, though it is somewhat diminished by selection on my part.  In spite of that there is a clear difference in the amount of black on the two kittens.
 
 


 

Suntali's father, Ch, Synergy Scimitar 
black silver ticked tabby
 

Suntali's mother, Synergy Mirage 
shaded silver point at 3 years old (photo 2/16/02)

Back to Feline Genetics
Back to Shaded Page
Back to Synergy Homepage