![]() ![]() ![]() Good eye colour makes all the difference between a ‘top winner’ and an ‘also ran’. It is the aim of all breeders to breed clear green eyes, but few breeders do so with consistency. ![]() Though the Breed Standard states that the eye colour of the Oriental is green, the reality is that the eye colour of very many Orientals ranges from orange to yellow to yellowish-green and the desired clear green is seen in the minority of cats. In the Breed Standards for the Red, Cream and Apricot there is recognition of the difficulty in breeding clear green eye colour in the red series cats and the requirement is for the eyes to be ‘Any shade of green, the more vivid the better, with no flecks of contrasting colour’. The GCCF Breed Standard states that the eye colour in the Oriental should be ‘Green with no flecks of contrasting colour’, though in the Havana & Lilac this is qualified as ‘Clear, bright vivid green’. Genetically the Oriental and the Siamese are very close and visually, other than the body colour, the main difference is eye colour, for unlike the Siamese the Oriental has a green eye. With the exception of the Foreign White all Orientals are of genotype CC or Cc s and show the full expression of coat colour. In addition to the ‘coloured’ cats there is of course another ‘Self’ variety, namely the Foreign White which is of a different genetic origin, and has the blue eye colour of the Siamese, indeed genetically it is a Siamese with an additional gene for white! The second group of Orientals consists of the Torties, Smokes and Shaded – they are neither self-coloured cats nor Tabbies and the final group are the four patterns of Tabby. The Oriental Selfs are the single colour cats the Black, Blue, Havana, Lilac, Cinnamon, Fawn, Caramel and also the Red, Cream & Apricot. The GCCF divides Oriental Shorthairs into ‘Oriental Selfs’, ‘Oriental Non-Selfs other than Tabbies’, and ‘Oriental Tabbies’. ![]()
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