Im anxiously waiting to hear from the breeder as to whether or not there is a seal point in the litter her cat just had.
Can anyone tell me exactly when colors start to show and also when you can tell the sex of a kitten?
Thanks in advance!!
Christina
You can tell the sex of a kitten right away if you know what to look for. Boys have a dot and girls have a slit. Double check the girls by spreading the skin near the opening apart. The slit of a girl will widen but a boy will stay a small dot.
I can usually tell the seals from the blues by the time they are one week old. By looking on the back side of the ears and comparing the slightly darker ones from the lighter ones you can tell the blues from the seals. There is a lot of room for mistakes especially when you add in other factors like tortie or lynx. Tortie or lynx may not show up for a month or more but will only be passed down if one of the parents is a tortie or lynx.
Sexing kittens is a lot more difficult in some cases than one might expect and mistakes of old kittens are made, with even vets discovering the mistake when they start to spay and find out they need to castrate instead - or the opposite. The most reliable method is the distance between anus and urinary opening, the males being farther apart. Seal noses and ears start to darken first, so one can expect seal colorpoints or mitteds first, although we were once fooled when a bicolor had a dark nose mismark. : ) So, that seal mitted turned into a seal bicolor one day.
Color can start to come in in a few days and seals will show first. However, it may take some time and particularly one can be fooled about pattern - or about color if the litter is of one color only and you do not have comparison on depth of color. On the other hand, reds/creams can take a very long time and can be months old and one is not sure if he is mitted or colorpoint. Keep in mind that the hue in seal, blue, chocolate and lilac are all black. The "colors" are just the effect of the distribution of the black pigment and the effect of skin color. They are all black/gray.
Most breeders will wait until they are highly confident that they have color/sex/pattern right before they commit to it - at least if they are experienced. : )
Hello Christina
Love your signature, It is so true.
Fingers crossed your seal point is in that litter.
6 weeks until I know if my blue is in my breeders next litter.
Cheers,Paul
Seals and blues... lots of breeders, especially newbies like me, have a hard time telling them apart right away. I believe seals get darker and have a more black-ish nose, whereas a blue stays lighter and has a gray-ish nose.
Sexing can be done immediately... however it took 3 vets to tell if Buddy (Originally named Leona) was a boy or a girl. I thought he was a girl from birth till he was 6 weeks old! Then during his first vet appointment, I asked if the vet could tell me because someone asked if he was a boy or a girl, and I saw something that made me suspect "boy". I was TOTALLY surprised, and even the vet had a hard time telling because this kitten's testicles were small, even for his age. His little "dot" was really close to his tail, and he even had a "slit-like-dot"... it was a dot, but it kind of looked like a slit. The vet was confused at first too! He got a couple of the other vets at the clinic to come in and check him out, and the results were mixed between male and female. So the vet did something where he made the cat's penis pop out and we all exclaimed "Its a boy!!" haha.
Im wondering how long it would take to determine if a chocolate bicolour is show marked or not?
Good question...
I myself am not 100% sure, however mismarks should show up by 8 weeks of age.
Thanks for that,
My breeder of my new kitten has a five week old chocolate bicolour boy and I am awaiting the news whether he is show marked, as unfortunately if hes not, he has to go to a different home as we will be showing our new kitten.
I would love to get a kitten from Canada.. it would be my little canadian prince/princess.. maybe one day..
Be careful, there is a lot more to a show cat than good pattern - and some of it takes many months to appear, including size. In fact, pattern is at the lower end of the important characteristics. You are better thinking of it as the kitten is a show prospect for that age based on the kitten and how the kittens of those parents develop. Some kittens with big ears will grow into them and some will not. Many times one thinks one has a pet or show kitten and finds out the opposite when he is older. You need to evaluate type as well as pattern - flat plane, eye shape, eye color (which can easily change up to six months and beyond), ear set, profile, lack of cobbiness, etc.
Not only that, but some breeders claim to have chocolates when in fact they have seals... now they probably dont mean to mislead you as they probably dont know for sure. The only real way to know if you've got a chocolate or a seal is by testing.