Lilac Pointed British Shorthair

Lionel in Snow - British Shorthair cat (white with lilac points), a photo by steviewonderous on Flickr.

His name is Lionel and he is a lilac pointed British Shorthair cat. He looks magnificent in the snow.

Although the British Shorthair is well known for its blue (grey) coat the cat associations allow a wide range of coat types and pointing is one of them.

I find that there is a very fine differences sometimes between blue pointing and lilac pointed. Lionel looks like he has blue pointing!

Colourpointed British Shorthair Cat Club

This is the link for the website of the Colourpointed British Shorthair Cat Club. Their mission is "to promote the Colourpointed British Shorthair, Chocolate and Lilac Self British Shorthair and Related Series."

British Shorthair Colorpoint

The British Shorthair Colorpoint (or colourpoint) is a pointed British Shorthair cat in the same way that the Siamese cat is pointed.

The gene "c^s" carried by these cats restricts the "development of color to the animal's extremities". You can read about pointing on this Siamese cat page. It is a form of albinism. Read about pointing genes on these pages about the Siamese cat.

The colorpointing changes with outside temperature and the age of the cat. An older cat will have a darker torso area due to poorer blood circulation.

Apparently, two years of age is when the pointing is the most attractive. Newborn kittens are born white. The points show gradually thereafter.  The color of the points are clear after eight weeks of age. The eye color should ideally be a deep blue (as in the Siamese cat).

Pointed British Shorthair Cat - Photo by Tscherno (Flickr)

In the photograph above, the truth is I am not sure what type of pointing this is. It looks like tabby chocolate pointing. This is certainly tabby pointing because you can see the tabby stripes but the colors are often very subtle. This is called lynx pointing in Siamese cats.