Blue British Shorthair Show Cat

Yep..another blue British Shorthair at a cat show it seems to me. He looks so smooth. His coat is crackling with crispness! The coat of the British Shorthair should be dense and the best cat coat of all to stroke.

Blue Brit SH - Photo quatre mains on Flickr

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!

Silver Classic Tabby British Shorthair Kitten

I think I have shown a picture of this really nice looking cat before. This time the coat is more visible. This is a classic or blotched (as opposed to a mackerel - striped) tabby coat. The background is silver.

Silver tabby British Shorthair - Photo by warper

See a page with lots of pictures and explanations on the tabby cat coat.

Large Blue British Shorthair Cat

This is a great picture of a blue British Shorthair cat because the cat is gorgeous and a blue British Shorthair show cat and secondly the photo allows us to scale this cat because he is being held by a person.

Large Blue British Shorthair Cat - Photo byTomi Tapio

This is a large Brit SH. Not all Brit SHs are this large. This leads me to the subject of how difficult it can be to provide information on the weights and sizes of cat breeds.

I have a page on that subject: Largest Domestic Cat Breed, but at least one person has challenged my information.

The truth is that there will be breeders who breed large versions of a breed and in some countries the size might be smaller and there are differences between individual cats naturally.

Then there is the natural difference between male and female cats. It becomes complicated. All I know is that this boy is big and beautiful.

British Shorthair Characteristics

Here are just three physical characteristics as specified by the CFA breed standard relating to the head area as set against a show cat who is in a cage sitting in his litter for emotional comfort (smells like him).

British Shorthair breed standard nose, head and eyes - Photo: by Daisyree Bakker

Bicolor British Shorthairs

I may have mentioned that bicolors are white plus one color. Funny in a way because white is an amalgam of three primary colors: red, green and blue.

It is the piebald gene (white spotting gene) that produces the white areas. Here is a famous British Shorthair bicolor photographed by Helmi Flick. His name is IW/SGC HMS Prescott of Chaucer "Scottie" for short. He was TICA's 2008 Alter of the Year (British Shorthair).

The photograph was published in Scientific American. Well done Helmi.

Bicolor British Shorhair cat - Photo copyright Helmi Flick

The colored parts of the coat appear to be grey, a dilute black. But there is little hint of blue in the grey. Perhaps a breeder can help me out with that. He lives with Jeane Camarena and daughter.

The photo on this page are protected by copyright ©. Violations of copyright are reported to Google.com (DMCA).

Chartreux versus British Blue

Chartreux vs British Shorthair (Blue) - Photos copyright Helmi Flick

The Chartreux looks like a blue British Shorthair. Sometimes people mix up the two and I can see why. On close inspection they do look different though.

The Chartreux is a separate cat breed and a French cat breed. The only color allowed for the Chartreux is blue while the British Shorthair can have a wide range of colors and patterns according to the breed standard.

The breed standard for the Chartreux differs from the breed standard for the British Shorthair.

For the Chartreux the ears are slightly larger and slightly more erect on the head, which is less round and more angular (reverse triangular shape).

The Chartreux is said to have skinny legs and smiling face. It has a long history as has the British SH.

The photos and text on this page are protected by copyright ©. Violations of copyright are reported to Google.com (DMCA).

Cream Mackerel Tabby British Shorthair

Meet "Krystofer", a young exuberant boy British Shorthair cat photographed by the celebrated cat photographer, Helmi Flick.

Cream Mackerel Tabby British Shorthair
Photo copyright Helmi Flick

The photo on this page is protected by copyright ©. Violations of copyright are reported to Google.com (DMCA).

You can see his faint banding on the limbs. You can read about tabby cat coats by clicking on the link.

As to the color cream; the recessive dilution gene dd causes the pigmentation that caused the red coat "phaeomelanin" to be clumped irregularly along the hair shaft that gives the appearance of a dilute color - so red (orange) becomes cream.

Cream can be altered by the dominant dilute modifier dene Dm to make apricot.

Genotype of cream is: ddOOdmdm
Genotype of appricot is: ddOODm-

Free Public Domain Photos

Cat - by kevindooley

To all the people who are tempted to violate someone's copyright here are some ideas about free public domain photos. First let's remind ourselves that everything on the internet is protected by copyright unless there something on or around the work that says otherwise. Nothing can be copied unless it is expressly allowed. That is the default position. Update: this was written around 14 years ago! :-?

All images in public domain?!

Things have changed. Pinterest pretty well single-handedly destroyed the concept of intellectual property rights for images on the internet. Everything they publish is almost certainly a breach of copyright. No one complaints. If they can do it why can't I? The true is that all I have said below is true but in practice at 2021 no one cares anymore. You can be sure that almost any image is in the public domain nowadays :)  !



Creative Commons (CC)

Perhaps one of the best ideas to come out of the internet (did the internet give birth to this idea? - not sure) is creative commons. It appears that a lot of people don't know how it works.

Creative commons is a licensing system. In using creative commons the author of a work - be it a photo, words, music etc - can give permission to anyone to use the photo under the terms of the license.

These photos are not strictly speaking free and in the public domain but their allowed use is as good as public domain photos.

Types of CC License

There are four different types of license; each one allows use of the work under the particular conditions of the license.  A "license" is a form of permission to use the photo.

Some are more restrictive than others. And importantly the licenses are used together (I explain this below). Each type of license has its own symbol.

This license allows people to use the photo in anyway they wish. You can use it "as is" or adjust it, crop it etc. All you have to do is give the photographer credit (the symbol of the person indicates that - called "Attribution License"). This form of license is always included. When giving credits I always copy the photographer's name and drop it under the photo on my site (see header photo on this page). I also give a link back to the photographer's page as a thank you. In fact Flickr asks that we do that as it helps Flickr. Let's do it. We got the photo for free didn't we?

This license allows use provided you use it exactly as it is published on Flickr (the symbol of the equals sign indicates that - called "NoDerivs License"). You can't change it and you have to provide a credit on your website where the photo is re-published. Please stick to these conditions. Often there are lots of nice free public domain photos under this heading as good photographers like their photos to be unaltered for obvious reasons. The photos can be used by use for commercial purposes too provided the symbol below is not attached.

This license means that you can use the photo but not for commercial purposes. The symbol of the dollar sign struck through indicates that ("NonCommercial License").

This license means that you can use the photo and derivatives of it (modifications of it) and distribute those modified images ("ShareAlike License").

As I said above, these different types of license are balled together. For example, I often use the the top two licenses balled together, attribution and no derivatives. The photographer allows use of these photos provided you don't alter them and give a credit (and a link back but this is not obligatory under the license - it is just a Flick requirement). This page on the creative commons site shows the different forms of license.

I use Flickr for free public domain photos. I think it is the best of the photo library sites and they have a clear creative commons section.

There are about 180 million photos on Flickr that are usable under creative commons. We should thank the people who grant permission to others to use their photos.

I'll explain how to get to them so that you don't feel like "stealing" the photos of Helmi Flick on my websites.

Go to Flickr - click on this link. Then scroll down the page to the footer menu. You will see creative commons. Click on it. You then come to a page of icons of the six different versions of creative commons together with thumbnail samples of the photos under each license. These licenses are what might be called combo licenses. Two or more types of creative commons license are balled together as mentioned above. The attribution license is always present.

I would suggest that initially you use the second one down (Attribution-NoDerivs License). If you use a non-commercial license there is the added complication of deciding what "non-commercial" means. There are various interpretations. I would suggest that a Google Blogger blog with a low visitor count and perhaps a bit of AdSense on it could be classified as non-commercial. That is just my thought.

Select which license that you prefer but stick to the conditions as laid down by the license please.

If you don't see a picture that appeals you can then search the whole of Flickr and select copyrighted photos. These are expressly protected by copyright but it does not mean that they can't be used. All you have to do is ask the photographer using the Flickr email service. The photographer will probably be happy to let you use it provided you give a credit and publish the photo as is (unmodified). But you have to ask first. This is a must - sorry.

Flickr's repository of hundreds of millions of photos should satisfy your needs one way or another. Play by the rules please. It makes life so much less complicated in the long run.

If you don't like Flickr there is Photobucket and Webshots which are large sites with more millions of photos and similar methods for use of the photos.

Finally if you want to search globally for creative commons, free public domain photos, use the creative commons site: CC Search.

Other Free Public Domain Photos

The most obvious way a photo becomes free from copyright and in the public domain is through lapse of copyright over time. Copyright law is complicated unfortunately. I wrote an article about it some time ago: Definition of Copyright - this page also covers some of the ground covered on this page.

Google provide a book service - Google Books -  and some of the books are copyright free due to lapse of time. Sometimes these old books have useful photos. You can link to them and embed extracts using Google software. Or you can take a screenshot legitimately. Try Public domain only books.

Pixabay is good. Try it. I use it quite a lot. Search for it using Google or Bing.

Fair Use

Use of copyrighted material is sometimes permissible under fair use but great caution is required. I would not use this concept unless you know what you are doing an if you do please argue your reasons why you think you can use the photo under fair use.

The Wikipedia authors use fair use sometimes and their arguments are instructive. Here is Wiki's page on the subject.

Wikimedia Commons

This is another excellent resource for free public domain photos. Search it thoroughly and please comply with the terms and conditions. Wikimedia Commons home page.

Free Cat Clipart

I have a page on PoC on this.

Stock photo Sites

Sometimes these sites provide the odd photo for free. Here are two examples of stock photo sites:

1. Dreamstime
2. iStockphoto

Please don't violate the copyright of Helmi Flick on the pages of my website: PoC - thanks.



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