NOTE: The rest of the genes in this book will NOT be sex-linked! This means that all of the genes will work the same way as human eye color does, as mentioned in the first chapter.

There are two types of coloration for cats, which are dense and dilute coloration. Black, chocolate, cinnamon, and ginger are all dense colors, but each of them have their own diluted variant. When a cat's pelt color is diluted, it looses melanin and becomes a less pigmented version of its dense variant. Dilution is a recessive trait, meaning that a cat MUST have two copies of the dilution allele in order to be a dilute cat. If they only have one dilute allele, or none, they would be a densely colored cat.

The dilute version of black is gray, which is... gray. It can appear in many different shades, such as light, medium, or dark gray, and the shade of gray is not determined by this gene. However, gray is NOT the same thing as silver. Silver and gray are both controlled by two different genes, and silver (believe it or not) is not a dilute color. Silver coloration will be discussed in a later chapter.

The technical term for gray fur is actually "blue" but I will be referring to this as gray because I don't want to confuse people into thinking that I'm talking about blue-gray cats. Gray cats can either be warm toned (having more red pigment) or cool toned (having a blue tint). This gene does not determine whether a cat is warm toned or cool toned, and I'm guessing that there are a bunch of different polygenes affecting this that I'm just not aware of. This means that a blue-gray cat CAN exist in the wild, but a cat being blue-gray does NOT make them a Russian Blue. Russian Blues are a type of purebred cat, which don't exist in the wild.

The dilute version of chocolate is lilac, also known as lavender. No, this looks NOTHING like Starkit from Starkit's Prophecy, a lilac cat looks like a gray cat whose fur has a brown tint to it.

The dilute version of cinnamon is fawn, which is a pale brown. And lastly, the diluted form of ginger is cream. Here is an image for reference, from messybeast:

And once again, I didn't add the solid colorations, because it's self-explanatory.

I WILL note that the images for lilac and fawn aren't very accurate, so I will add two more images down below! The first one is lilac, and the second one is fawn.

Lilac and fawn, due to being variants of chocolate and cinnamon, are both very rare and usually only found in purebred/pedigree cats. Once again, if you're writing a Warriors fanfiction with realistic genetics in mind, make sure some of your cats come from kittypet ancestry if you would like lilac/lavender or fawn cats!

If a cat with dilution is a tortoiseshell or calico, they would be known as a dilute tortie/calico. Depending on their coloration, they would either be blue (gray) and cream, lilac and cream, or fawn and cream. Both colors will be diluted, not just one or the other.

For example, if a chocolate and ginger tortoiseshell inherited both dilution alleles, it would be a lilac and cream cat, not a lilac and ginger cat, or a chocolate and cream cat.

So that basically covers most of the possible MAIN coat colors for cats!

Note for anyone writing a Warriors fanfiction:

Of course, the technical names for these colors would not work if you're writing a Warriors fanfiction. While it would be reasonable to say a cat's pelt color is fawn, it wouldn't make much sense to refer to a cat in the book as cinnamon or chocolate, since cats don't know what chocolate or cinnamon are. Here is a list of how I reference each color in my books!

Black- Black

Black tabby- Dark brown tabby, or black tabby

Chocolate cat- Brown/dark brown

Chocolate tabby- Brown tabby

Cinnamon cat/tabby- Light brown cat/tabby

Gray cat/tabby- Gray

Lilac- Lilac (Even though the pelt color lilac doesn't look anything like the flower, I don't know what else to call this. The best alternative I can come up with is "brown tinged gray cat")

Fawn cat/tabby- Pale brown cat/tabby (or you could just call them a fawn cat, since cats know what fawns are)

Ginger- Ginger/Orange/Red/Flame colored

Cream- Cream/Pale ginger