Cats
AMBER AND RUSSET - LATE COLOUR CHANGE GENES
Copyright 2014, Sarah Hartwell
The ancestors of the domestic cat were nondescript black/brown striped tabbies. Over the
centuries, mutation produced a wide array of colours based on 2 different pigments.
Eumelanin gives the blacks, browns and blues while phaeomelanin gives the reds, fawns and
creams. A few other genes give further variations on those colours such silvers, colourpoints
and solids/selfs. Mutations continue to occur and unexpected colours also turn up due to
inbreeding where recessive genes, hidden for generations, start showing up.
AMBER AND LIGHT AMBER
During the 1990s, some purebred Norwegian Forest Cats in Sweden produced chocolate/lilac
and cinnamon/fawn offspring. However, those colours are not found in the purebred
Norwegian Forest Cat gene pool
annaabi.ee 
