Caramel is a subject of controversies in some Cat Fancies. So I better start with a little bit of history.
Although some people think caramel and apricot are new colours, caramel has first been identified as a different colour in a
litter in England as far back as 1974.
One of the kittens was what we now call a caramel! The first apricot was registered in
1975.
The mother of the caramel was the result of a cross of a Shaded Silver dam and a Siamese Red point sire carrying
dilution (blue). The poor typed Shaded Silver dam came from a mismating between a Chinchilla Persian and a Siamese.
The caramel cat was Scintasilva Sue (sometimes referred to as Scinta Silver Sue).
Pat Turner rescued her mother from the owner.
As soon as the litter was born, it was reported that the kittens were silver. Pat Turner looked at them and decided she would like
to breed silvers and use these cats.
Nobody knew much about silver in these days. The mother of Scintasilva Sue was mated to a
lilac point Siamese and produced another all silver litter.
A daughter of Scintasilva Sue, Scintilla Serene Sunset
(a tortie shaded silver Oriental) was mated to Southview Trappist, a chocolate longhaired Oriental cat. He has been used
for the foundation of the Angora's (Oriental Longhaired Cats) in the UK. He carried cinnamon and recessive white (or blue-eyed
albino: ca). From this litter came a kitten with a strange colour, a colour that nobody had ever seen.
This mating had been
done deliberately to get information about the difference between unsound coats in Oriental chocolates and silverwhite roots in
smoke cats.
At first it was thought that this colour was the result of the working of the cinnamon gene and the blue-eyed
albino gene. However, some time later after a lot of research of the pedigrees of the cats involved and after a lot of test
matings had been carried out, it became clear that this was not the case.
It was realised that this was a totally new colour.
Now several interested breeders started matings to find out more about this new colour and to decide whether this was indeed a
new gene, whether this gene was recessive or dominant, how it worked and if it was worth going on with it.
After a while
it was decided not to continue breeding with cats which carried the recessive white ca gene, as this gene was undesirable in the
Oriental and Siamese cats.
Scintilla Serene Sunset, who did not carry the recessive white gene, had been mated to two other
males and had given litters, which included caramel kittens.
A lot of the silver Orientals and Siamese bred by Pat Turner
kept on producing caramels.
A very good caramel was Scintilla Koffee Ole who went to a breeder of Oriental chocolates who
used him quite a lot. This breeder also owned Gd Ch. Folklore Moonwolf, a black spotted oriental, who was also a descendant of
Scintasilva Sue and he must have sired several caramels (as people reported), although there were hardly any judges at that
time who could recognise this new colour. Moonwolf is at the back of many "Megrim" cats and has been extensively used
because he sired such beautiful kittens.
Scintilla Serene Sunset was mated to a SP Siamese who carried blue and she produced
a seal silver tabby point male, Scintilla Rosario, he was the father of Scintilla Koffee Kreme, a Siamese caramel point.
Scintilla Koffee Kreme mated Scintilla Sugar Icing, blue silver spotted Oriental, and she produced Scintilla Muted Mink, a caramel
silver spotted Oriental. The type of the caramel Siamese and Orientals was improving all the time. A son of Muted Mink and
Amoureuse Melody (Oriental black carrying blue), was Scintilla Pastel Royale, a caramel silver tabby point Siamese.
Pat kept using sons and improving type all the time. Scintilla Caramellian, chocolate tabby point Siamese, was the next in line.
Pat Turner did most of this work on her own, as not many people were interested.
Unfortunately disaster struck her cattery
and she lost a lot of her cats. Only a few of her own caramels survived such as Scintilla Caramelodot, a caramel spotted tabby.
The colour with which this new colour is most often confused with is lilac. If you compare a good lilac silver tabby and
a caramel silver tabby there is a very distinct difference between the two, especially in daylight.
Caramel is more brownish
with a blue haze or metallic tint.
In Pat Turner's home in Eastborne in the South of England geneticist Roy Robinson,
Peter Dyte, Maureen Silson and Julia May all came to help and try to determine the genetic heritage of her breeding investigations.
From an unsuspected side caramel slipped in as well. When the first tabby point Siamese appeared they were seal tabby or
chocolate tabby point. However, most tabby points come from a mating of Macji Dom Dija, a seal point Siamese x a Silver tabby moggie.
Their daughter Tiggi, mated to Chancasta, a seal point Siamese gave birth in 1960 to Miss Tee Kat, the well-known seal tabby point
that can be found at the back of almost all Siamese tabby point pedigrees. The silver tabby moggie was found in the same street
where a Chinchilla breeder lived. And in the old days cats were not couped up in cat runs and catteries all the time but often
could roam free in the village?
So it really was no wonder that caramel popped up in Siamese tabby point lines too, although
it took some time for most breeders to realise they had a different colour.
Spotlight Petit Burlinks, a seal tabby point
grandson of Miss Tee Kat had a progeny of over 60 cats, mostly seal tabby, chocolate tabby and seal and chocolate points. So the
gene that produced caramel went unobserved for a long time. And there were numerous other tabby points, which were mostly being
bred with excellent seal points to get a better type and the tabby points became ever more popular.
Apricot, the colour
that appears when a cream cat carries the dilute modifying gene, appeared as early as 1975 when Pat Turner mated Scintilla Serene
Sunset to Taurus Kay Cavalier, a lilac point Siamese. Three kittens were registered by the GCCF as Apricot. Through the years
more and more apricot kittens were born and they are now also recognised and registered as a different colour by the GCCF of
the UK.
Somehow caramel must have gotten into Burmese lines as well. At the time Pat Turner had Scintilla Dresden Rosa,
a caramel point Siamese born 16-08-1974 (out of Scintilla Serene Sunset by Southview Trappist, the chocolate Oriental longhair),
a Burmese breeder came to visit Pat with a strange coloured Burmese. She came to ask Pat's advice about the colour,
which appeared to be the same colour as Dresden Rosa. Both Pat Turner and Peter Dyte were convinced that this Burmese girl
was caramel too. But she was registered by the breeder as a lilac to avoid any dissension in the Burmese breed about a new
colour!
When I saw one of the first blue Burmese arrive in Eindhoven (Holland) years later, they had a distinct
brownish tint on their backs. I was told all blue Burmese looked like that. I was surprised because I was used to blue point
Siamese where a brown hue was not at all permitted. Looking back at this Burmese I suppose that amongst these blue Burmese
there must have been a lot of blue-based caramel Burmese as well.
In the meantime Pat Turner had found out that
the gene for caramel was dominant to blue and lilac and
that it was epistatic to red, black (seal) and chocolate (brown).
Later on it was discovered that it was also epistatic to cinnamon.
This meant that the colours red, black, chocolate
and cinnamon could mask this dominant gene and that they could be carried unobserved for many generations as long as there
were no genes for dilution (blue) involved. Pat also found out that the caramel colour carried by one cat was sufficient to
produce caramel, provided there were also two genes for dilution (blue) present. This meant that it must be a dominant gene.
Either you get a caramel cat or the cat is blue, lilac or fawn. You cannot have a blue, lilac or fawn cat carrying
the gene for caramel. In the meantime a new name had to be found for this gene. First it was called Modifying dilute, but
in the end Dilute modifier (Dm) has been accepted as the better name.
It is situated on a separate locus and can be inherited
separate from genes for other colours, including blue.
The colour genes are always present in pairs: BBDD for a black cat,
bbDD for a chocolate cat, BbDd for a black cat carrying chocolate and dilution (blue). Chocolate and cinnamon take the same place
(locus) on the chromosome. This means that a black, blue or red cat can have one gene for chocolate OR one gene for cinnamon. If
this cat had two genes for chocolate he would BE a chocolate cat. If he had two genes for dilution (blue) he would BE a blue cat;
if he had one gene for chocolate and one gene for cinnamon he would also be a chocolate cat, because chocolate is dominant over cinnamon.
(Although you cannot see this in the way the genes are written; they are both recessive to black).
The combination of two genes for
dilution (or blue) and two genes for chocolate in a black cat produces another colour: lilac (bbdd). The combination of two genes for
dilution (or blue) and two genes for cinnamon in a black cat produces the fawn cat (blbldd).
In the red cat two genes for dilution
produces the cream cat. Chocolate genes have no visible effect in a red cat. Although the late Persian breeder Piet Pros? in Holland
thought that red Persians carrying chocolate had a much brighter colour red.
The dilute modifying gene is dominant, which means
that one single gene can alter a cat into a caramel, provided also two genes for dilution are apparent. This happens to blue, lilac and
fawn cats that carry this gene.
In cream cats, which also have two genes for dilution, the extra Dm gene alters the cream cat into the
apricot cat.
Cats with two Dm genes are homozygous for caramel, but can only produce caramel kittens when mated to blue, lilac, fawn
and caramel cats or cats which carry the dilution gene.
A caramel cat with one Dm gene (a heterozygous caramel) gives
this gene to 50% of its offspring. A caramel cat with two genes for Dm gives one Dm gene to its entire offspring.
But you cannot see
this gene in red, black, brown, seal, chocolate or cinnamon cats, because the dilute modifier gene (Dm) is epistatic to these colours.
This simply means that the colours black (brown), chocolate, cinnamon and red mask the Dm gene and thus can carry the gene that produces
caramel or apricot without showing it.
So these red, black, chocolate and cinnamon cats could carry the Dm gene for caramel or
apricot along for many generations without anybody knowing it; as long as there are no genes for dilution (blue or cream) involved in breeding
these cats, it will not appear.
And it can come as a big surprise when a black cat carrying caramel, undetected for generations, and also
carrying blue, is mated to a blue cat and a caramel suddenly appears out of the blue!!
The dilute modifying gene modifies the colour
blue, lilac or fawn cat into a caramel cat. Blue-based:
Blue changes to have a brownish tinge, darker than lilac, mud coloured almost.
In tabby cats the caramel pattern gets a distinct metallic overlay, which can also be seen when kittens have some ghost markings they definitely
look metallic too. There is another difference between cats that are blue-based caramels and lilac-based caramels. The blue-based caramels have
taupe footpads and the lilac-based cats are cool toned dark lilac with chocolate brown overtones and chocolate brown hairs between their footpads
when young.
The cats that are fawn-based caramels have a much warmer colour, reddish brown almost cinnamonlike with a soft blue hue and are
very beautiful. Fawn-based Caramel Point cats are paler in colour but can easily be distinguished from Fawn Point cats.
Polygenes for
warm and cold and for cool and warm also play a big role.
This means you can get different looking cats in the same colour range, just
as you can get three or more different toned chocolates or blues or lilacs depending on the influence of their polygenes.
In my opinion
the blue- and lilac-based solid caramel cats (and caramel points too), are a bit dull compared to other colours and by far not as attractive
as tabby (point) caramel cats are.
In red cats the dilute modifying Dm gene changes nothing, but it changes cream cats to apricot: a hot
cream with a metallic sheen instead of the powdered effect of the cream.
Caramel tortie point cats can be easily identified, as apricot is much hotter in colour than cream, while the caramel has that distinct
metallic overlay, even in kittens. They look very attractive.
In breeding caramel pointed and caramel tabby pointed cats myself, I could only see a slight colour difference between my blue-based and
lilac-based kittens. Each time I got almost the same shade of caramel. But that was probably due to the fact that I had cats which carried many
polygenes for light and warm. Other breeders could sometimes make more distinction between these two shades of caramel.
Lilac point can be clearly distinguished from caramel point cats at an early age, as lilac developes only slowly, while Caramel pointed
kittens developed their colour as quickly as blue or seal pointed kittens. When you have a very quickly developing lilac point you most certainly
have a caramel point instead! The hairs between their toes are always more chocolate than lilac, also an indication for caramel.
Caramel tabby pointed kittens can be tricky if they also carry many polygenes for warm and pale colouring and especially if the cinnamon
gene is also involved. Then it often takes more time for the caramel colour to develop than 3 months, as the cinnamon gene seems to slow the
colour development down.
And the colour in a caramel point changes all the time; sometimes it is more bluish, a week later it may have
changed to more brownish overtones, which can be very confusing. When cinnamon is also involved in Siamese you might not know what colour
kitten you have at first but have to wait a little longer, as the cinnamon gene slows down the development of the colour in pointed cats.
A good help is the pad- and nose leather colour. Fawn points have pink nose leather and paw pads, while fawn-based caramel points have a
soft mauve colour. The hairs between their pads usually give a very good indication of the colour of the cat.
As I already have said,
I like caramel best in tabby patterns. The metallic sheen of caramel contrasts beautifully with the warm ground colour in tabbies. I can still
remember a gorgeous oriental caramel classic tabby I had to judge in the U.K.
I have seen the caramel colour for the first time many years
ago when visiting the English breeder and geneticist Patricia Turner in the South of England. They were called Oriental "Pastels" at
the time. Pat Turner told me that the American geneticist Don Shaw called the caramel colour "Barrington Brown".
He saw this colour for the first time in the USA in Chinchilla Persians. Pat Turner used American chinchilla cats imported to England in
her breeding program to develop silver in her oriental cats. When this new colour showed up unexpectedly, Pat Turner and her friends carried
out a lot of matings to understand the nature of this colour.
In some Tai-Bagheera cats in Germany, also bred with the help of American
chinchilla cats (Jemari chinchilla's if I am not mistaken) to get silver Orientals, caramel popped up as well.
There was a meeting about caramel, organised by one of the independent Cat clubs in Rotterdam (Holland) in the late 80's (I am not sure of
the year as I could not take all my papers with me to Australia). Pat Turner and many independent judges and also several breeders attended this
meeting.
Pat Turner told us more about caramel and we discussed caramel intensively. There also the name "taupe" was used for the
first time for the blue-based caramels. One of the Dutch breeders invented this name for her caramels as she thought it fitted the colour of her
cats better than caramel. She had rather dark toned caramel cats (originating from the German Tai-Bagheera lines) and the meeting agreed that it
was a good idea to call the blue-based cats with the Dm gene taupe and to keep the name caramel for the paler lilac-based cats with the
Dm gene.
We saw caramel, lilac, blue and taupe cats in solid and tabby Orientals and Siamese on this meeting. There had not been bred any no fawn-based
caramels in Holland at that time.
Pat Turner promised to give the information about taupe and caramel to Roy Robinson, as she did. In Roy Robinson 3rd edition of Genetics
for Cat Breeders he referred to taupe, but unfortunately for the lilac-based caramels instead of for the blue-based, as was the intention.
When I bought the 4th ed. of Genetics for Cat Breeders and Veterinarians this year, with very interesting new facts about many things,
I discovered that taupe was still used for lilac-based caramel, which was never the intention. Fortunately the GCCF of the UK never used the
name "taupe", but kept using caramel for the cats with dilute modifying gene.
A caramel cat (aaBBddDm) x a homozygous chocolate
cat (aabbDD) gives 100% chocolate kittens with a gene for dilution (blue); 50% of the kittens are caramel carriers (aabbDdDm).
When a caramel
point Siamese (aaBBcscsddDm) is mated to a chocolate point Siamese who carries dilution (blue) (aaBBcscsDd), you can get the following kittens:
| aBcsd |
| aBcsDm |
| aBcsd |
| aBcsd |
| aBcsdDm |
| aBcsD |
| aBcsd |
| aBcsD |
aaBBcscsddDm = caramel point Siamese
aaBBcscsDdDm = seal point Siamese with gene for caramel and dilution (blue)
aaBBcscsdd = homozygous blue point Siamese
aaBBcscsDd = seal point Siamese with gene for dilution (blue)
Although dominant,
the Dm gene can only express itself when 2 genes for dilution (blue) are present.
If the caramel cat (aaBBddDm) is mated to a blue cat
carrying chocolate (aaBbDD) we can make the following diagram:
Caramel female : aBdDm and aBd
Blue male carrying chocolate: aBd and abd
| aBBdd | aBbddDm |
------------------------
| aBbdd | aBBddDm |
| aBbDd | aBbDdDm |
------------------------
| abbDd | abbDdDm |
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