Showing Their Coats

It's tough to photograph a black cat (at least for me and my digital camera -- too often they are just dark blobs with eyes) and even harder to show that your black cats aren't all black. But Koto (foreground) and Lyra were good enough to stay fairly frozen so I could snap the photo below, and the sunlight did a pretty good job of showing the variations in their coats.


Both were fixated on a bird (or two or three) in the backyard, and Koto was chattering away.

You can see Koto has a silver and black tabby pattern on his body, but mostly solid black legs, tail, and face (with very faint brown tabby markings on his forehead.)

Lyra has much more black, although her belly is starting to silver up. But then she's got these crazy long silver patches that spring out behind her ears - reminds me of Grandpa Munster's hair (am I dating myself? If you are too young for this reference, see picture below.)

Anyway, not knowing the lineage of my sweet shelter kittens (or even what their mother looked like) and not being an expert on cat genetics, I can only guess that Koto and Lyra's darker face, legs, tail (points) mean that somewhere in their heritage was a Siamese or Burman (Birman.)

Both kittens have full tails that look ready to completely plume out at any moment, but Lyra's coat is a bit shorter, shinier, more dense (except for those crazy behind-the-ear tufts)...whereas Koto's coat is longer, fuzzier (you can see I don't have proper cat breeder terms done) and downy soft.