GENES DON’T LIE - Dilution Gene — When Colours Go Soft

Not every pastel is what it seems. And not every blue is actually… blue.

There’s a little gene (we call it dilution - “d”) that changes the way colour shows up in a cat’s coat — or skin, if you live with a Sphynx. It doesn’t wipe out the pigment; it just spreads it differently. Think of it like mixing paint with water. The colour’s still there, just softer.

But here’s the catch:

That only happens if the cat gets two copies of the gene (d/d) — one from each parent. Just one? (D/d) It’ll carry it, sure, but it won’t show.

So what changes?

• Black (BB or Bb) becomes blue (BB dd or Bb dd)

• Chocolate (bb) turns lilac (bb dd)

• Cinnamon (b1b1) shifts to fawn (b1b1 dd)

• Red (O) fades into cream (O dd)

Sounds simple enough, right?

But it gets messy. Really messy. Especially in hairless cats.

No fur = nothing to scatter or diffuse light. So what you think is lilac might actually be blue. And what looks like cream might just be a pale white with a warm undertone. Add daylight, warm bulbs, iPhone filters… and suddenly no one knows what they’re looking at.

Here’s what we see all the time:

• Blue cats listed as lilac.

• Chocolate called blue

• Slightly grubby whites called cream.

• And people insisting their cat is both blue and lilac at the same time. (Spoiler: genetics doesn’t work like that.)

So how do you know for sure?

You don’t. Not unless you test.

A simple swab — and the guesswork is over.

Because colour can lie to your eyes.

But genes? They don’t.

All rights reserved. Please do not copy, reproduce or republish this content in any form without the written permission of the author.

#GenesDontLie #ColorDilution #DilutionGene #FelineGenetics #CatGenetics #ddGenotype #BlueOrLilac #CreamOrWhite #PastelCats #SphynxColours #SphynxCat #HairlessCats #EthicalBreeding #CatBreederLife #KnowYourGenes #TestDontGuess #TrueColorOnlyDNAKnows #CatColorMystery #BehindTheColor