Are there really any BLACK cats?

[calico2222]

Originally Posted by momto3cats

I had one as a child. Muffin was jet black all over, no white hairs or ghost striping. She did have a tendency to get "sunburned" fur in summer, though. Her back and chest would lighten to a reddish brown color from the sun. It went back to black when she got her winter coat.

I was going to ask if the sun would lighten a cats fur like it does human hair. When I lived in the tropics with very strong sun rays, I had a black cat that was all black, except for 3 white hairs on the base of her tail. But when the sunlight hit her right her fur definitely took on a ruddy color. I thought it was really cool.

We have 3 black cats now. Well, they are actually barn cats that think we adopted them

. The mom defenitely has a few white hairs, her one baby (Ramsey) has a few on his chest but we thought her other baby (I call him Jag, but DH calls him A$$hole...his is tailess so that's because that is all we see, and because that is how he acts) was all black but when we looked between his toes there were white hairs. I think a natural all black cat is very rare (plucking that hairs doesn't count.

)

 

[lorie d.]

Originally Posted by valanhb

I was going to point that out too. There's a reason why they call those small patches of white, even a few hairs, an "angel's kiss". In the dark/middle ages when they would kill black cats as being witches' familiars, they wouldn't kill the ones with a touch of white on them. If they were all black they didn't survive. So the ones with the white were the ones allowed to keep breeding and passing the genetic code on. So while I'm sure there were a few who did, they would be rare.

Yes, yes, I read that somewhere too once!

I should have included this in my earlier post. Sweetie's coat color is pure solid black, even in direct sunlight, there are no ghost stripes or redness in his coat at all. However, he does have some small groupings of white hairs on his neck/chest area, and a small white patch on his underside.

 

[sharky]

I knew likely at least 100 all black cats when I was a young child

... they were the semi ferals of many generations that were feed by the folks at the nursing home Grandma worked at

 

[natalie_ca]

My cat Gem was completely black. That is until she sat in a sunbeam, then her red highlights came out and she looked bronze!