Red or dead

Red and black (and more)

Pages:

Introduction

Photos(examples)

Red and black (genetics)

Your contribution

Exchange

Links

Red or dead, red information by Marjan Boonen

* I developed my own theory about this: the most dominant, natural, basic catcolour is black mackerel. This makes sense, because it's a good protective colour. Red on the other hand, could more easily give the cat away to their prey, as they often can see colours. To still get some protection, the stripes and spots always remained to help imitate shadows.

Nota Bene; this is just a self-concocted theory!

A solid red castrato (mix Persian/MaineCoon)

A solid red cat doesn't really exist! Genetically yes, but not to the eye (fenotypical) No one really knows why, but that's just the way evolution arranged it.* A solid red cat will always have a more or less discernable tabbypattern. There are different kinds of tabbies: mackerel, classic, spotted, ticked, shaded & shell (chinchilla).These last two colours can only be found with red/silver cats. With certain breeds, such as Persian and British shorthairs, a lot of effort has been put in breeding cats with as little tabbypattern as possible. The longhaired Persians will of course show less tabbypattern than a shorthaired cat. Non-pedigree cats have not bothered will all these ideas of course. They just went their merry way..

Where can we find reds?

All over the globe basically.

In Stephen Budianksy's book "The character of cats", I found the following text: "The o-gen (responsible for the red colour in cats) can also be found in high frequency, in small, isolated areas far outside Small-Asia. Like in Sicily, the Spanish Islands in the Mediterranean, the north-and-westcoast of Scotland, the Faeröer-Islands and Iceland. The W-gene (responsible for the colour white in cats) is very often found together with the O-gene in some of these places: East Turkey and especially the North Atlantic Islands. All this, points to oversea transport of white and red cats. Biologist Neil Todd, who researched this data, suggested that possibly the Vikings were responsible for this transport of red and white cats. Probably because they happened to like these colours.

Spending vacationtime on some Mediterranean and Canary Islands and the United Kingdom, it occoured to me that there seemed to be quite a lot of semi-feral red cats. These are the kind of cats that are not really owned by anyone, but nevertheless are used to and like humans. Very often they get fed by local inhabitants and tourists, but no one really feels responsible for every aspect of their wellbeing. On Samos, one of the most western Greek Islands, off the coast of Turkey, one can find a lot cats that are similar to the Turkish Van -cats.

Here is an example of a Van-cat

These are just very superficial, personal findings and not confirmed in any scientific way. In due time I hope to be able to read and learn more about anything and everything that has to do with red cats.

Again: suggetions and ideas are most welcome!