The word "agouti" is rather confusing. It refers to a gene which creates a certain type of cat coat namely the tabby cat coat. It is signified by the symbol A. It is dominant. The recessive is non-agouti indicated by the symbol a. Dr Morris describes the word "agouti" as the name given to a coat in which each individual hair is marked with bands of black, brown and yellow. He is referring to the tabby coat in which each individual hair strand is banded, essentially striped. The striping is created by two types of colour pigment, eumelanin (black/brown pigment) and phaeomelanin (yellow/red pigment).
The toyger, a relatively rare cat breed has a striped tabby coat created by the agouti gene:
The glamorous Toyger has a tabby coat. Photos by Helmi Flick. Collage by Michael.
Tabby coats are marked with dark areas of swirling fur or stripes or spots. There is another version which is the ticked tabby, seen on the Abyssinian cat and also in another species of animal a large South American rodent called an agouti; hence the name. The Abyssinian cat is an all-agouti cat.
The agouti gene is very common and "highly conserved among all mammalian species". It produces a molecule called the "agouti protein". As the hair shaft grows within its hair follicle in the skin, eumelanin is produced by cells within the hair follicle called melanocytes. This pigment is deposited into the growing hair. As the amount of agouti protein increases within the melanocytes, eumelanin production is inhibited which results in a shift to production of phaeomelanin which is then deposited in the hair shaft to create this sandwich effect. In the ticked coat the band at the top is black with yellow at the base.
Another well-known animal that happens to be a cat but this time a wild cat species which has a very well-defined and strong ticked coat is the jaguarundi. The cat with the most pronounced ticked cat coat:
In short, when you think of the word agouti you should think of the tabby cat coat in all its varieties.
One of these cats is the aggressor and the other, the star of the video, is the pacifist because she strikes a defensive pose as if to say, "Stop that, it's enough". Her behaviour reminds me of Japanese martial arts. The pacifist cat is the tabby-and-white while the aggressive one is a tabby.
Cat colors nearly always relate to cat breeds as opposed to species. If the question means "How many cat colors and pattern combinations are there for the cat breeds" (which is what I think the question means) the answer, per Gloria Stephens in her excellent book: legacy of the cat (lower case title) is....144...Hope this helps :)
If the question is purely about cat breed coat colors I don't know the answer because the question might be too tricky to answer bearing in mind that color types are dictated by the cat associations of which there are several. They can have different ideas. Comments welcomed ;)
Sorry for the weak answer. I am watching the men's final at Wimbledon 2016 while writing this... :)
I'm sure that most people know the answer this question because cats have been discussed on the Internet for about 10 years now. The tuxedo cat is not a breed of cat.
This is a certain type of cat coat that is black-and-white with not much white so that the cat has the appearance of wearing a tuxedo which is formal dress wear the men: the penguin suit.
The classic pattern gives the cat a button of white on the chest but as shown in the photo the area of white can be more extensive.
A lot of the breed standards for a wide variety of cat breeds allow their cats to be black-and-white and some of these cats will be tuxedo cats.
It all depends on the breed standard as to what is allowed regarding the coat of the cat with respect to a particular cat breed.
It is a waste of time writing copious pages of waffle in answering the question in the title because the answer is straightforward and common sense: ensure your cat is healthy by being observant and taking him to the vet when needed and not putting it off, providing the highest quality food you can afford which means high quality wet food or a properly prepared and stored home made raw diet and combing his coat regularly. That stimulates the oils. I comb my cat, who has a single coat, with a flea comb all over. This is a very fine comb (32 to the inch) and he likes it a lot as it massages his skin. I use it myself to scratch my head ;)
A contented cat too will be healthier through lowered stress. That is also down to us in providing an excellent environment.
Fats - essential fatty acids (EFAs) - are important for a cat's coat. Omega 6 and Omega 3 fatty acids help to moisturise the skin. 20-25% fat on dry matter basis is fine (how to read a label on American cat food!). High quality cat food should contain this.
Cats keep their coat in good condition through grooming. Old cats neglect grooming sometimes. We have to step in and help. Fat cats can't get at some spots. Once again we have to help.
Some residents living in north London think they have wild cat lookalike roaming around their back gardens and many find it a bit disturbing. They really haven't seen anything like it before but they think it might be the same cat that terrorised the community in 2011, which they called the "Beast of Shepherds Hill". The area concerned in Highgate; quite a fancy area.
Very domestic looking and far from a "beast"!
This wouldn't happen in America, absolutely not because this "miniature leopard" is in fact a Bengal cat and what's amusing is that the newspaper which reported on the story describes the cat incorrectly in my opinion as a Savannah cat. They are quite different. The cat as far as I'm concerned is most definitely a spotted Bengal cat and the spots are what are called donuts (doughnuts). At least no one shot it! That is something that would not happen in the UK.
The Bengal cat is a wild cat hybrid but at fifth filial level it is all but domestic. They have been around the cat show circuit since the 1970s - well established and popular. There are many breeders in the UK too so I am surprised they got this wrong, or did they. It seems like one of those, we-have-no-news-today stories; let's find a cat that is terrorising the neighbourhood.
For a cat and perhaps for other creatures white is the absence of pigmentation in the hair strands. The hair is not white because there is white pigmentation in the hair. There is no pigmentation in the hair strands. In short, white is the absence of colour in this instance whereas in an absolute sense white is the merging of all the colours of the visible spectrum. I think that's quite a nice contrast.
Natalie - a non-pedigree show cat. Photo copyright Helmi Flick.
You would have thought that if there is no pigmentation in each hair strand, each strand of hair would be transparent but clearly not. Therefore, the un-pigmented hair strand must be white or opaque to a certain extent and very light in colour.
The reason why there is no pigment in the hair of white cats is because cells which are created very early on during the develop of the foetus inside the womb called melanoblasts - which turn into melanocytes (which are pigment producing cells) - do not migrate from their point of origin to the hair shaft. The point of origin of melanoblasts is the trunk neural crest cells.
The reason why this migration does not take place is because of the white cat carries the white spotting gene or the dominant white gene. In these cats the migration is partly or completely halted.
Because the cell in the skin in which the hair strand is embedded is unable to produce pigment (eumelanin and phaeomelanin) there is no pigment inside the hair strand; it looks white.
Guard hairs - part of the top coat. This is a protective coat to the undercoat and the hair strands have a sensory function. They are straight and taper to a fine point. They are the longest of the three types.
Bristle or awn hairs - part of the top coat. They form a protective coat to the undercoat and have a sensory function. They are thinner than guard hairs but variable in thickness. They thicken near the tip before tapering to a point. They are intermediate in length between guard and down hairs.
Down or wool hair - undercoat. They serve as an insulating barrier against heat loss. These are the thinnest and finest and of similar diameter throughout their length.
To which can be added:
Whiskers (vibrissae)- these are very sensitive and play an important sensory role when travelling in dark conditions and are used to feel prey when killing prey.
The above is the classic coat structure for long haired cats but some cats have single coats. You will see coats lying flat to the body with no undercoat. This is easy to see using a comb and it is easy to comb even with a flea comb. Double coats can be hard to comb if left unmaintained. The Siamese and Siamese related cats have single coats as has the Devon and Cornish Rex which have fine curly hair. The rex cats shed less than normal coated cats but the Devon Rex can be semi-bald on occasions.
The American Wirehair has a "tightly crimped coat" that is coarse to the touch.
When a cat's hair grows for a longer time it becomes long hair. When the rate of growth is slower the hair become very short as for the Cornish Rex. In the case of the Cornish Rex the rate of growth is normal.
The three types of hair strand narrow where they enter the skin and then thicken under the skin (subcutaneously) forming a club, which anchors the hair strand.
New hairs are created throughout the year replacing old but seasonally this process reaches a peak in late summer says Robinson's Genetics. An alternative view1 is that cats who spend all the time outdoors shed most in late spring while cats who go out for part of the day shed at the beginning of summer. Indoor cats may shed more lightly and year round.
Mid-winter is the time when molting is at its slowest. The molting process is dictated by the amount of ambient light and not temperature. More ambient light results in more shedding.
A male cat's seasonal molt is about two months in advance of a female's. Neutering has no effect on molting. Winter hairs are slightly longer than summer hairs.
When double coated cats begin to shed, the down hair sheds patchily. Brushing a cat during shedding helps remove the dead hair.
You may have read that the zebra's striped coat has developed, scientists think, to keep flies away. There has been much discussion as to why the high contrast zebra stripes had evolved. Tests have discovered that flies dislike striped coats and the narrower the stripes the better. Apparently the stripes reflect light in a way that puts flies off coming near.
zebra and tiger stripes. Photos (top): by andrew lorien
Photo (bottom) by TeryKats
On the basis of this finding, many doors must surely be opened. Human clothes should be striped if you are living in warmer equatorial climates, for instance.
What, though, of the tiger. We all agree that tiger stripes are good camouflage in long grass, forest and under dappled light. But I have doubts about the effectiveness of the camouflage.
The stripes of a tiger are very sharp and high contrast. Most wildcats have a broken pattern that is more in tune with the environment where they live. Their background color is grey brown and the pattern spotted. Their spots are often broken or doughnuts (rosettes).
No wild cat has such a striking striped coat as the tiger. Cats like the ocelot and margay have heavily patterned coats and densely colored patterns but not sharp high contrast stripes.
It just crossed my mind whether the tiger too has developed his high contrast stripes as both camouflage and as a fly repellant? The tiger needs good camouflage less than the other wild cats as it is the top predator so perhaps it lost some its camouflage in a trade off with fly repellant.
My guesstimate is that about 2-3% of all cats, feral, semi-feral and domestic are white. I mean completely white and I mean domestic cats and derivatives. There are no figures in books or on the internet that are the result of a survey or some sort of genetic calculation.
I make the guesstimate of the basis of observation over many years.
The most common cat coat type is the tabby cat and tabby and white cat. There are many varieties of tabby cat color. The tabby cat must take the lion's share of cat coat types, say at about 50% of all cats and even more.
In the warmer climates you will see more white on cats and I suspect more pure white cats. Bicolor cats are fairly common too especially in warmer areas. These are cats of two colors, white and one other. These might account for about 15%. So it is by deduction, in taking into account all coat types, that I conclude that totally white cats are fairly rare.
However, in Turkey the purebred Turkish Angora (TA) is always pure white as I recall (breeders breed them in a variety of coats though in the USA). The white TA is the genuine article. Pure white with odd colored eyes (one blue and one yellow) is the most desirable. These cats are also moggies. I would guess that the percentage of cats that are white in Turkey is higher than 3%, say 10% perhaps. I stress that this is a guess.
I have checked books and scholarly reports etc and found nothing on this particular subject. Perhaps someone better than me can leave a comment? Please leave a comment.
The reasons why black cats are not adopted are because people find the coat plain and boring and the black cat has an association with bad luck and even evil.
The black coat is relatively uninteresting to the average person. Clearly many people like black cats but on average people find other coat types such as tabby and white more interesting. The black coat is too plain to some people. It absorbs light so it is harder to see texture.
Perhaps the biggest reason is that the history of superstition that has been carried forward to the modern day. In many places, the black is considered bad luck. Yet in many other places it is considered the opposite: good luck. That tells you how irrational the idea is. But it is real and it puts some people off adopting a black cat.
Then we have the idea of a witch's familiar and the night and darkness etc. Black cats are associated with the night and therefore with the unknown and evil etc.
The night or darkness makes people nervous. The black cat has this loose connection to the night.
What people don't realize is that the genes that make the cat black also makes the cat more resistant to disease. This last point has not been thoroughly investigated so it is somewhat anecdotal but the research that has been done supports this conclusion. And it applies to wild and domestic cats.
Perhaps this is a factor that would rehabilitate the black cat. However, most people are concerned with the appearance of the cat.
Black cats are black because of a combination of the genes that the cat has (its genotype). The expression of these genes in the cat's appearance is called the "phenotype".
The black cat has a dominant form of the brown gene. This controls how dark the pigment, eumelanin, is in the hair strands. The dominant "dense" gene dictates that the pigment covers all the hairs of the cat. The agouti gene is mutated to cause the pigment to be throughout the hair strand and not banded as is normal.
Black cats are more likely to be euthanised at cat shelters because they are less popular than other colors. The black cat is 2/3rds more less likely to be adopted than a white cat. Black cats are healthier and the black cat needs to be rehabilitated.
See black cat coats - this expands significantly on the above.
The Abyssinian cat is a very popular, slender purebred cat that is well known for his or her special tickedtabby coat. The history of this cat breed is interesting. There are no facts but plenty of speculation. There is agreement that this cat breed is one of the oldest in the cat fancy and that the breed quite possibly originates in India as a jungle cat (Felis chaus) wildcat hybrid that was imported to England by a British soldier via Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).
The two most recognised cat coat colours are probably the ruddy or natural colour and the blue.
History of Abyssinian Cats
My assessment as to the possible history of the Abyssinian cat is based on historical record and Darwin's records that come from his voyages to the far east. As mentioned above my theory is that this cat breed started in India, around the middle of the 19th century as a wildcat hybrid to the domestic cat sized jungle cat (Felis chaus), which, incidentally, looks very like the Abyssinian. It is not uncommon for semi-domestic cats to mate with small wildcats. This occurs with the Scottish wildcat for instance. A modern version would be the Bahraini Dilmun. The original Abyssinian cat in unrefined form would have been very interesting looking and it would not be unsurprising if a person took a fancy to the cat and imported it into England.
{Note: it is interesting to note that the modern version of the jungle cat x domestic cat cross - a wildcat hybrid - is the Chausie, a relatively rare cat breed.}
I have a page on blue Abyssinians. You can see it by clicking here. The page also discusses red Abyssinians and some genetics.
Red Abyssinian cats
Ruddy Abyssinian Kittens - the person in the picture is the
the breeder: Pat Harbert.
See this image in large format: Two Ruddy Abyssinian Kittens. You can see three ruddy and three blue Abyssinian kittens in a large format picture by Helmi Flick by clicking here with some background info or see it right here:
Taken at an Oklahoma cat show. Two blue, 3 ruddy and 1 spoiler
Please respect Helmi's copyright.
These are commonly called "ruddy" (Tawny - Ruddy/Usual). Below is the video of the blue and ruddy Abyssinian kittens that you see on this page. They are ready to be photographed by Helmi Flick at a cat show in Oklahoma, USA. One of them caught my eye. He was tired and I think he was a bit of a loner. Is he the one on the right spoiling Helmi's photo? I think so.
Click here to see the above video in HD on YouTube. You can see the finished photographs and compare blue to ruddy in this video. Or you can read some more about the background to the video by clicking here.
Long Haired Abyssinian Cats - The Somali
The Somali cat breed is extremely attractive. The resemble foxes in their coat color and foxy plumed tail. I like foxes so I like Somali cats. The male cat in the video below was one of the stars of this cat show in Oklahoma, USA.
This section incorporates Abyssinian cat behavior because personality dictates behavior. Please don't believe that each and every cat breed has a particular and nicely defined personality. They generally don't. Remember there are over 100 cat breeds. You do get some generalized differences between the more active, slender and perhaps more intelligent cats (say Bengal cat) and the more gentle indoor loving cobby type cats (for instance the Persian) but individual cat personalities outweigh differences in cat breed personality.
That said a person with first hand experience of handling and wrangling the majority of cat breeds, Ken Flick, says that the Abyssinian is extremely active. He says that the Abyssinian cat is more active than an F1 (first filial) Chausie (a Chausie is a wildcat hybrid - jungle cat to domestic cat as mentioned above).
Abyssinian cats are one of the more intelligent cats it is thought and this degree of activity supports that finding.
As it happens, I have a page on Abyssinian cat rescue so there is no need to go over it here. Yes, there are Abyssinian cats that need rescuing but I think you will find them quite scarce. After all this is a very popular purebred cat. Click on the link to go to Abyssinian Cat Rescue.
Next some more frivolous and more commercial stuff. People search for it.
Abyssinian cat cursor
There are several sites that offer an Abyssinian cat cursor. Tucows is one. It is a download and the cursor is the head of an Abyssinian cat. See the page here.
Abyssinian cat license plate
This is a purely American thing. You don't see it elsewhere and they would be illegal in the UK and probably Europe generally. Amazon.com (North American market) do a license plate frame that might appeal to an Abyssinian cat fan:
Abyssinian Cat Care
Caring for Abyssinian cats is the same as caring for all domestic cats with the proviso that plenty of attention is given to your Aby as they are intelligent and active. These qualities need to be expressed. One other aspect of caring for the Abyssinian cat is a knowledge of any genetically inherited diseases that might concern this breed of cat. There are several which you can read about on this page - just scroll down the page. Two are:
Depends on quality as is always the case with purebred cats. By quality I mean to what extent the cat matches the breed standard in appearance. At the poorer quality end expect to pay $300-500 (USD in the USA) and £1000 at the best quality end. You can translate dollars for pounds to figure out the price in the UK but please check (prices as at June 2011).
Abyssinian cat earrings
Couldn't find earrings but this ornament might do (please click on the image):
There is no such thing as a tabby cat personality. There really can't be. The tabby cat is not a breed of cat - see Tabby Cat Breed. The tabby cat is a cat with a tabby coat and this coat type is found on a large number of different cat breeds and is the most common type of coat for random bred cats (mixed breed cats).
The tabby cat coat is everywhere. The tabby coat is found on a large percentage of wildcats too. In fact nearly all the wildcats have tabby coats. If there are 500 million domestic cats in the world, about 300 million would be tabby cats!
It is absurd to think that these 300 million cats all have the same or similar personality and also odd to think that the type of cat coat also dictates the cat's character. Also if there was such as thing as a tabby cat personality the wildcats would have the same character as the domestic cats.
It is possible that people search for tabby cat personality thinking that the "tabby cat" is a cat breed - it is not. It is a very ubiquitous cat coat, no more, no less. It is worth pointing out that the difference is personality between the cat breeds is quite small. Most are in the middle ground. There is a difference between the most static (e.g. Persian) and the most active (e.g Bengal) but most are in the middle.
If you would like to read more about the tabby cat coat and see a wide range of photographs of different types of tabby cat, please go to this page: CAT COATS TABBY.
Even if there was such as thing as tabby cat personality, the character of individual cats would have a greater impact on behavior. Individual cats have quite a wide range of personalities.
The world "solid" as imagined refers to continuous color. As expected, solid cat coats come in a wide range of colors both in high density color and diluted (see diluted cat coats). In the cat fancy, the full colors are black and red. Dilute black makes blue and dilute red creates a cream solid color. Naturally, there are fine shading differences from cat to cat in the same color. It is not unusual for faint tabby markings to be present despite the fact that we are talking about "solid" (and therefore continuous and unbroken color). These are described as, "ghost markings" and are most commonly present in the cream and red cats.
Here are some pictures of the solid cat coats:
The pictures are copyright Helmi Flick and they are reproduced from the www.seregiontica.org website with the express permission of the owner. Please respect copyright always - thank you.
God, I wish! I wish my cat liked to be hoovered. Think of the benefits. You could even groom your cat at the same time so all the dead hair got hoovered up. Even just hoovering without grooming sounds great.
Hey, got the best idea I have had for a while. Hoover should manucfature an attachment for their hoover (!) that has a Furminator head. Furminator make probably the best grooming tool as it gets to the undercoat and weeds out the dead and loose fur. This may take off.
The only downside is that most cats don't like the noise. But if we put the vacuum cleaner in a room, close the door (partially) and use a long hose maybe this could become the normal thing to do to groom our cat. And it is so satisfying for us to as we know we are getting rid of that damn hair.........Oh my cat loves to be hoovered, like hell she does.
Bengal Cat Sundog, the very well known Bengal cat of Julie Gracie Moseley of ZenDada Bengals - Austin TX , has a wonderful classic (blotched) marble tabby pattern:
Sundog, in fact, is one of the best known Bengal cats in the world. I guess Julie Gracie Moseley is one of the best known Bengal cat breeders. You can see more of her work here: Marble Bengal Cat.
What is surprising is that the gloriously high contrast and high quality pattern has, in places, a 3-dimensional appearance. The hair of the pattern is slightly longer than the background. Julie Grace Moseley calls this 3D Spine Lines:
Bengal Cat Sundog. Photo copyright Julie Grace Moseley. This photo came from an email published on the Marbled Bengals Yahoo Group. I have made a decision to publish it here as it is the first time that I have seen a picture of these 3D Spine Lines. The picture was taken with a camera phone. I have provided a link to her cattery: Zendada Bengals.
On a simple level, all this means is that the dark patter fur is longer than the background. But it goes further. Is the hair finer? Does it feel different? I'd like to know. It must make the experience of stroking this cat a little special. Also, is this typical of all Bengals with a marble pattern. I am sure not. So what happened with Sundog? Lots of questions. I hope someone can leave a comment to answer them.
Here is a great close up photograph of an Agouti ticked cat coat on a wildcat, the Jaguarundi.
The "ticked" hairs of a Jaguarundi wildcat. This is a cropped images from a larger version, allowed under the Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic creative commons license. Photo by alumroot
If you look at the hair over the eyes (great wildcat wild look eyes) you can see the color at the first half of the hair (from the skin) is black. Then it is yellow and the tip is black again.
The black pigment is eumelanin. The yellow pigment is phaeomelanin. Melanin is a substance often seen in plant and animal life in which it primarily serves as providing pigment. For the technically minded eumelanin and pheomelanin are:
"a brown-black polymer of dihydroxyindole, dihydroxyindole carboxylic acid, and their reduced forms. Another common form of melanin is pheomelanin, a red-brown polymer of benzothiazine units largely responsible for red hair and freckles" (src: Wikipedia® published under GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version - see Wikipedia® licensing below).
The agouti gene controls the way the pigmentation is deposited in the individual hair. Eumelanin is produced in cells called melanocytes. The agouti gene inhibits the production of eumelanin but less so in the case of pheomelanin.
The wild type A (dominant) gene causes the hair to be yellow at the base and black at the tip. This description seems to be partially contradict what we see in the hairs in the photograph where they are black-yellow-black. The basic principle is in place still, however (comments welcome).
The classic agouti ticked cat coat is the Abyssinian cats coat. Tabby cats have ticked hair and a pattern as well; either classic, stripes (mackerel) or spotted. A classic mackerel pattern can be seen on the Toyger cat. See cat coats tabby too if you like. See links to more coat types.
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Long haired cat coats - a very long haired black (smoked?) Persian cat. Black hair mats less apparently. Is such long hair natural - it depends - photo copyright alasam.
Are long haired cat coats natural? The long haired Persian particularly can have very long hair indeed. It'll need human grooming as the cat cannot cope on her own. If the cat is a purebred Persian Longhair, a show cat, then the hair will be unnaturally long. Or will it?
It very much depends on your point of view. All the wild cats that I have seen including the Scottish wild cat have short but dense fur. You don't see long haired cat coats on wild cats. Scotland can be pretty cold and wet but nature has decreed that the best coat for these conditions is the one found on the Scottish Wild cat - a typically thick but controllable tabby coat.
But wild cats are wild cats and domestic cats are different or at least we want them to be different. Even though one originates in the other. So if you think that the domestic cat is a completely different animal to the wild cat and is meant to live on carpet and sofas etc. then pretty well anything goes as long as health is not compromised in the breeding process.
That said it seems silly to me that fur should be bred so long that the cat can't groom herself successfully and needs us to help. That seems unnatural even for a completely domestic cat.
If you think that we like domestic cats because she is a true cat meaning that she has retained a lot of the characteristics of a wild cat, then to breed very long fur looks wrong and it doesn't matter if the cat is an indoors cat or not.
I'm of the second category. I like things natural and normal and believe that if we stray too far from the natural balanced cat we face problems of health and contentment for the cat.
Apparently the dilute colors (cream for example) mat more than the solid colors (black for example). It may have something to do with the hair strands being finer in dilute colors.
You don't see wildcats with matting as far as I know. Nature would have let the cat down if she had allowed the cat to evolve with a coat that matted. Matted coats are less effective at keeping out the cold and wet.
One last point, some animals other than cats have very long fur so very long fur is not unnatural but quite unusual.
Siamese Coloring depends on whether your talking about the Traditional Siamese cat, the Modern Siamese cat, a type in between and whether the cat is purebred or not and whether you're concerned about complying with cat association standards.
Non-purebred
There are many lovely Siamese cats that miserably fail cat association standards and have slightly dodgy pointing etc. These are Siamese mixes, non-purebred. These cats commonly have the classic seal pointing (dark brown, black looking). The original Siamese cat imports to the West were seal point. Most people seem also to keep the Traditional Siamese. Sometimes the pointing is not pure (broken).
Purebred
But you've really got to start at the top and that is the Cat Fanciers Association's breed standard. The CFA doesn't recognize the original type of Siamese cat, the one we know. For them the Siamese cat is the super slender and long cat with a thin head. This cat, if she is a show cat, is allowed to have 4 types of Siamese cat coloring (pointing). They are the classic pointing colors of seal, blue, lilac and chocolate.
See a chart on this page (opens to the main website and the traditional Siamese - scroll down).
Interestingly, The International Cat Association (TICA) who have recently decided (wisely) to recognize the Traditional Siamese, place (as far as I can see) less restrictions on pointing color. So their standard on the Thai (Trad. Siamese) is both traditional and modern in the opposite way to the CFA (Modern conformation, traditional pointing).
TICA recognize both the Traditional (called the Thai now) and the Modern (called the Siamese). For the Thai there appears to be no restriction ("appropriate for color class") and for the Siamese the rule is "all pointed colors".
I tend to limit the discussion on cat associations to the USA as there are conflicting views worldwide as to breed standards and cat breed classification. Plus the US is by far the largest domestic cat "market".
However, a quick check on the UK premier registry (GCCF) tells me that they allow a wide range of Siamese cat coloring. They list self-pointed - meaning solid color pointing as opposed to broken pointing (tabby), tabby-pointed (the agouti gene having an impact on the pointing), tortie-pointed (tortoiseshell affected pointing).
The self-pointed cats under the GCCF standard would appear to cover a very wide range including, but going beyond, the classic 4 allowed by the CFA (above).
You can see a posting about pointed cats generally (not restricted to the Siamese) by clicking here.
More Siamese cat coloring - click this link to see more of Whitaker (heading this post) a gorgeous Flame Point Siamese cat and this link to see a Lynx Point Siamese cat.
Both wouldn't be allowed by the CFA, both would be allowed by TICA as Thai cats. The Flame Point could be a show cat.
The best place to see the Modern and Traditional is on the main website. Click these links for the Modern and Traditional Siamese cats.
Siamese Cat Coloring to Abyssinian Cat
Caring for Abyssinian cats is the same as caring for all domestic cats with the proviso that plenty of attention is given to your Aby as they are intelligent and active. These qualities need to be expressed. One other aspect of caring for the Abyssinian cat is a knowledge of any genetically inherited diseases that might concern this breed of cat. There are several which you can read about 
