Ragdoll colours
Chocolate point Ragdolls
Seal’s warmer cousin: milk chocolate points on an ivory body that stays pale for longer.
Seal’s warmer cousin: milk chocolate points on an ivory body that stays pale for longer.
Chocolate is a change to the brown gene TYRP1. The recessive b form alters the enzyme that finishes black pigment, so the cat makes a warm milk chocolate brown instead of black. A chocolate kitten needs two copies, one from each parent, so two seal parents can produce chocolate only if both carry it.
Under the Ragdoll’s pointing gene that brown sits on the ears, mask, legs and tail while the body stays ivory, and the warmth of the brown, next to a seal’s near black, is what people notice first.
Chocolate points are a warm milk chocolate on an ivory body; nose leather and paw pads are cinnamon pink rather than the dark brown of a seal. That pink is the quickest way to tell a chocolate from a lighter seal, because a young seal can look surprisingly warm. GCCF asks breeders to DNA test before registering kittens under the chocolate or lilac breed numbers unless both parents are already tested, which tells you how easily the two are confused by eye.
Every Ragdoll is born white. The breed is fixed for the Siamese form of the colour gene (TYR, the cs allele), which makes the pigment enzyme temperature sensitive: it works on the cooler parts of the body and switches off where the cat is warm, which is why colour sits on the ears, mask, legs, feet and tail and the body stays pale. The same gene is the reason every pointed Ragdoll has blue eyes.
The first colour shows on the ear tips and nose within the first week or two, the mask and tail follow, and by eight weeks the pattern is clear enough to describe a kitten honestly. The points go on deepening for two to three years, and older cats carry more colour on the body; both breed standards allow for undeveloped colour in kittens and darker bodies in older cats. Two everyday consequences: a shaved patch grows back darker, and a cat kept in a cold house will colour up more than the same cat in a warm one.
Colour is not temperament. The kitten in front of you tells you far more than the name of its colour, which is why we price every pure Ragdoll the same, whatever it turns out to be.
Chocolate develops a little more slowly than seal and keeps its body paler for longer; the ivory body and the warm points often do not show their full contrast until the second year.
We link to the registries’ own standards and to a university genetics laboratory rather than to other breeders, so you can check every claim above for yourself.
Seal pointDark brown points on warm cream
Blue pointSlate grey points on bluish white
Lilac pointFrosty pinkish grey points on milk white
Chocolate pointMilk chocolate points on ivory
ColourpointFull mask and points, no white
MittedWhite mittens, boots, chin and chest
BicolourWhite V on the face, white legs and belly
RagcoonRagdoll × Maine Coon, silvers and tabbiesNo premiums for colour, pattern or sex: every pure Ragdoll kitten here is £850, and our Ragcoons (Ragdoll × Maine Coon) are £600. The waiting list is the way to ask for a colour.