Identifying a chocolate Abyssinian can be difficult, since the differences from sorrel are not glaring. Photographs are practically no use in determining color when a cat is pictured by itself. The photograph at left of a group of three Abys, clearly shows there is a difference in the three colors, from top to bottom are shown a cinnamon, a lilac and a fawn female Abyssinian. It would be much more difficult to identity the colors if each cat were pictured by itself. So the objective is to find some unique characteristics of chocolates and lilacs to help us determine that they are not really sorrel or fawn. Pigmentation on the lips may indicate the cat is chocolate or lilac. Other traits can also be indicators, such as distinctive spine lines and paw pad coloration. The coloration of the tail tip seems to be the most reliable visible trait to distinguish chocolate from sorrel. Just by examining the last ½ inch of the tail, disregarding the rest of the cat, the chocolate tail tip will be the color of dark chocolate, and the sorrel tail tip will more closely resemble milk chocolate. Telling lilac from fawn is much more difficult. TICA judge, genetic instructor, and former Genetics committee chairperson, Gloria Stephens, author of "Legacy of the Cat", gave me the following advise when I contacted her concerning chocolate Abyssinians:
"Chocolate may be anything from a dark chocolate to a light chocolate in color. Cinnamon - to me is it the color of Hershey's Coco .. it is a further dilution of Chocolate. Bear in mind, the colors vary greatly. With the Aby/Somali, it is even more difficult, because the bands and ground color are highly rufoused. That is why CFA people still call the Sorrel Aby a Red Aby because it looks almost red. However, if they were to see a true sex-linked red Aby, they would know the difference immediately. One sure way to find out what color is to breed the chocolate (the cat would have to be carrying (d) to another cat carrying (d) .. in hopes of getting a lilac or a fawn. Lilac is a strange color .. it is almost on the grey-green side, where fawn is on the pink/beige side. . . . I would not be the least bit surprised if some of the 'Sorrel' Abys are not indeed chocolate. As far as chocolate or cinnamon goes - these are recessive genes to the brown tabby or black. To the best of my knowledge, cinnamon is recessive to chocolate and therefore can not carry chocolate."
In a separate message Gloria notified me that:
"I looked again at the hair samples you sent me and I honestly can't tell the difference between the chocolate and cinnamon .. hate to tell you, but they both look like chocolate to me And don't give up .. if the cats are truly chocolate, they should be registered correctly."
Pictured at right is Ohmy Maria TallChief, a chocolate female that has been genetically tested and confirmed as having the chocolate gene. Other than a genetic test, one way to get clues on how to determine color in Abys is to look at breeds that have both chocolate and sorrel as accepted colors. Ocicats make a good subject for this, since the breed was created using Abyssinians as a foundation breed, and still allows out-crosses to the Abyssinian. Sonja Moscoffian, breeder of Blackwater Ocicats in North Carolina, sent this information to the FIFe (Federation International Feline) list at Yahoogroups that clearly illustrates the range of color chocolate can manifest as, and details on how to tell the difference between chocolate and sorrel (cinnamon):
"In Ocicats we see all shades of chocolate ....from a very HOT type of chocolate who has very rufus background and almost red brown spots to a cold mute bittersweet chocolate...the background being almost a gray color and spots more dark brown then chocolate. We had to add to our standard the tail tip color to keep judges from trying to make bittersweet chocolates Tawnies.....brown spotted tawnies Chocolate and hot chocolates Cinnamon. Of course the trick is to get the rufus background with dark spots . . . Breeding bittersweet to hot usually doesn't give you the inbetween stage...normally you get a little of both."
Ian Francis, of Cattery Van Gelre in Lincoln, United Kingdom, breeds chocolate/lilac, dilute and silver Somalis. His first cat was a sorrel (then red) abyssinian, PR Ceianda MacGragor, who was one of the earlier cats of that color to gain a GCCF title. Ian also owned one of the very first fawn somalis in the UK He sent this anecdote to the Chocolate Aby list at Yahoogroups, that shows that confusion determining the color of sorrel and chocolate Abys is not limited to the inexperienced:
"I am fortunate in now living in a country where choc aby/somalis have been around for many decades. It is however still a huge problem for breeders and judges even here to decide on the correct colours - and we had a symposium a couple of weeks ago in which this very discussion took place. In particular WHICH sort of chocolate? Lighter or darker? Continental or British? That might seem silly - but the senior judge who was running the symposium had several pieces of chocolate to show the differences. We also saw a supposed chocolate cat that we ALL agreed was just a bad sorrel. Seeing it for real made a huge difference."
Some anti-chocolate Aby breeders ask that if the difference can't been seen by most people, then why are we trying so hard to force chocolate and lilac descriptions into the Aby breed? The reality of the situation is that chocolate and lilac are not genetically the same as sorrel and fawn. The differences are usually visible if they are looked for, and the trait can be tracked through generations. There are some people, men especially, but also some affected women, who really cannot see the difference. Mimy Sluiter, who besides breeding cats for over twenty years, also is a published author on many feline genetics and cat subjects. She has lectured at several fanciers courses organised by cat clubs and also gives lectures upon invitation at the veterinary faculty of the Utrecht University. She sent this information to the FIFe list regarding the subject of distinguishing chocolate from cinnamon and kindly sent me additional information for this article:
"Actually, some male judges *are* red-green color-blind in different degrees (no, I am *not* joking here, it is simply reality that 1 in 10 males has the trait on the X chromosome!). These judges all *do* have problems distinguishing reddish nuances in cats and consequentially then later influence opinions in discussions and decision making. This became f.e. very clear when a known Dutch red/green color-blind judge was commenting on how difficult it was to distinguish between chocolatepoint and cinnamonpoint Siamese a couple of years ago while the cats on the table he was comparing were clearly different to the normal eye and we all were puzzled what he was trying to explain as *we* saw something quite different! This was during the official FIFe-recognition show of cinnamon/fawn ORI/SIA.
On the other hand I also noticed that some ABY/SOM breeders do make mistakes in determining chocolate from cinnamon and sometimes the strong wish to "see" chocolate can blur the reality a bit. It is of course sometimes difficult to distinguish hairs of a ticked tabby cat well. People then take parts of the coat that are not relevant. I strongly advise people ONLY to use guard hairs with clear ticking ends and preferably from the spot between the ears or a long clear topcoat hair from the tail and put those for comparison on a clear piece of white paper and evaluate them *in clear daylight* only. Unless you do this, errors in determining chocolate from cinnamon (or lilac from fawn) can easily lead to errors since there are many nuances anyway and a ticked tabby coat has many hairs of many nuances and only a clear ticked tabby tip of a guard hair should be used to determine things."
A picture of an Abyssinian family. From left to right: Leotie Little Guy, on top of RW SGC OD Leotie's Mox Ruby, both cinnamon, CH Leotie Sirocco, chocolate, and Leotie Cocoa, lilac. Sirocco is the sire of both Little Guy and Cocoa, and Ruby is a multiple grand-aunt of the other three. Note the difference in the color on the top of Sirocco's head from that of Ruby and Little Guy.
Below are some pictures of Mariah, an Aby that was found wandering in Ocala, Florida in 2000. She was found on the streets when she was around 6 months old. The pictures show that this cat is a chocolate. Notice the dark eye and lip liner, the dark, not black, spine line and the tell-tale rosy pink paw pads. It is very unusual for photographs to show chocolate with such certainty at these. It would be real interesting to know where, and what lines, she originally came from.
