Grey Cat Breeds

Photo of Nebelung Cat Lovenblues Mozart Bronikowski
copyright © Helmi Flick – please respect copyright.

The Nebelung has a medium-long silky and fine blue/grey coat, with a plumed tail. This photo illustrates that nicely. 

Nebelung Male - Aleksandrva n Song de Chine. Photo: Wikipedia (2007).

The cat above is a 4 year old male (at time of the photo) and an international champion. His name is Aleksandr van Song de Chine. I presume the photo was taken by the person he lives with, Anke Zekveld. Anke has a cattery. The website is www.nebelung.nl. If I am not mistaken it is based in the Netherlands. Aleksandr is a fine cat of the grey cat breeds. And he has a lovely character too.

Grey Cat Breeds is a Google search term that I just picked up on my travels over the Internet. Some people like grey cats (or gray cats). There are a few cat breeds that have to be blue/grey, otherwise they are not a cat of that breed. Pretty tough criteria.

Here's a list with pictures and links of the grey cat breeds (are there some more?). The pictures are by amateur photographers of their cat companions. Some of the cats are relatively rare. For example, the Nebelung comes to mind in this category. There are links below the photographs to the best professional photographs, by, who else, Helmi Flick.

Nebelung


Nebelung cat photo copyright V La under CC

The color of this cat has to be blue (I would call it bluish grey, that's why he's in this post!). Go to a full description and a professional photo (Helmi Flick) by clicking on this link. You can see how this cat ranks with other cat breeds in terms of rarity by clicking here. You'll find that this cat is pretty rare still despite the fact that the breed was created in 1984 and developed with great determination by Cora Cobb. This cat is essentially a long haired Russian Blue. They were breed in parallel in Russia over the period Cora was developing the breed in the USA.

Chartreux

Photo: Helmi Flick.

This cat breed has a long and distinguished history, during which cat breeders are now intent on preserving the purity of this breed. The breed comes from France. See and read more (plus professional photos) by clicking on this link. The Chartreux is more or less the same as the British Blue cat. As is the case for the Nebelung the only color is the one you see - blue/grey.

Russian Blue


Russian Blue Cat photo ©Sensual Shadows Photography

The Russian Blue is another cat that has got to be blue/grey to be part of this breed and is therefore one of the grey cat breeds. As the name clearly suggests this cat originates in Russia, specifically the north of Russia, near the Norwegian Border from a town called Archangel. I am not altogether convinced of this fact. It would seem that some cat breed histories are "glossed up" a bit to make the cat more desirable. Cynical or just sensible? See more on this cat.

Korat

Korat cat - photo copyright Nick Hodge

The Korat cat primarily has one color, the one you see in the photo. However, of these four breeds the Korat is the only one that can also be found in lilac or pointed coat. I have selected the Korat because by convention it is considered to be a grey breed.

All these cats carry the genotype to produce the grey coloration, which is aaB-dd. The symbol dd represents a pair of dilution genes; aa represents the non-agouti gene (self black) and B- represents the brown gene (producing black to brown and chocolate etc. in more dilute forms). Read and see a lot more on the Korat cat (stays on this website).

There is one more cat breed that need not necessarily be blue/grey (many colours and patterns are allowed) but which looks great in grey and is often grey, and that is the British Shorthair. This is one of my favorite cats and is in the top 10 of the most popular cat in the pictures-of-cats.org website poll. Helmi Flick has two British Shorthairs.

In addition to these mainstream cat breeds there are two rare grey cat breeds: Madura Blue and Cuban Blue. I don't have photographs of these breeds. The Madura comes from the Madura and Ra’as Islands, Indonesia. The Cuban Blue is what is called “under development”. This means not yet accepted by the US cat associations as at the date of this updated section (August 2014). It is registered with a Cuban cat association: Associación Cubana de Aficionados a los Gatos (Acag).

The "Maltese Cat" refers to any random bred cat or cat of unknown breed with primarily grey fur. This comes from the belief that cats on the island of Malta are often grey haired cats.

Sources:

• Robinson's Genetics for Cat Breeders and Veterinarians and Sarah Hartwell

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