Black or brown?

We adopted this little guy in February.  His name is DiNozzo and he is about 9 months old now.  The questions is, what color is he considered?  His adoption paper listed him as black with brown face markings, but he definitely is dark brown all over--just like chocolate.  Since he is so dark, I'm thinking he'd be classified as black, and for his profile on the Home Again website (he was already microchipped) I listed him as "black/dark brown" since he could be seen either way.

So what do you guys think?  Black, or dark brown?

It looks like his pads and nose leather are black, so he's a black cat who happens to be at the browner end of black. Very sweet boy, bet he is pleased to be in a home not a rescue.  His markings may continue to fade over the next few months - at 9 months old he is still not finished developing.

I had never seen a cat this color, aside from pictures of Havana Browns and Burmese.  I've had a lot of cats through the years (including two that were very black), but never a brown one.  This little guy really lucked out.  We had just lost our older cat over a month earlier (she was almost 17) and I needed a few things from PetSmart, which is where he was that day.  His name is what popped out since I am an NCIS fan.  My mom wanted a solid black cat, but we both liked DiNozzo's color and he gave me headbutts when he was handed to me.

He is so small compared to cats I've had in the past, especially to my other cat right now--a 17 pound troublemaker (named Loki) who thinks he's a child.  Now that I think about it, Loki was darker when he was a kitten too.  We're pretty sure Loki is part Scottish Fold, and he likely has some larger breed mixed in, maybe Maine Coon.

Here are the two of them together, just for fun (and because I like to show off my cats):

Brown Burmese are genetically black, and have faint 'points' in the right light - their head, legs and tail are slightly darker.

A Havana is nothing like that dark - I had one for several years who was a bit dark for the breed, and you can see how different his colour was.  This photo is reasonably accurate:

Based on his first picture l was going to ask if he was black smoke, but he doesn't look smoke in the other two.

l have a black smoke and a chocolate brown, so l definitely agree he is black. l'll find a pic of the two together.

This is the black smoke facing the sun. Sometimes it makes parts of him look a deep burgundy.

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And here's the two of them together:

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