LET'S TALK MAINE COON COLORS

Breeders are advertising kittens  as Smoke, High Smoke, Shaded, Shell (or Chinchilla), Silver, and High Silver. Let's take a few minutes and learn the difference so you know exactly what color you prefer and so you can make sure you are getting exactly what you paid for! 

Smoke cats are all SOLID color cats - no tabby pattern. On these solid colored cats, each individual hair has color on the tip of the hair, like they dip dyed the ends of their hair. Smoke cats all have the "Inhibitor Gene,"  also called the "silver gene." One parent MUST be smoke (and carry the Inhibitory gene to pass to the kitten) to create a smoke kitten. The inhibitor gene, when present in a solid color cat, prevents (or inhibits) the solid color from going all the way down to the base of the hair shaft. So a smoke cat will, at the base of each colored hair, have a very bright, shimmery silver and at least 33% of each hair will remain the solid color, usually black or blue or red.  Black smoke cats have black nose pads (not pink) and bright silver at the base of each hair. If one parent is not smoke and if the base of the hair when you blow on the coat is not bright silver, it is not a smoke kitten. A kitten is HIGH SMOKE if it is a SOLID colored cat and has color only on the very tip,  1/12th of each hair. See images below for examples.