Blue Silver Mackerel Tabby
d.o.b. July 15, 2010
Dam: CH Gildethros Shaded Purrfection, Shaded Silver Patched
Sire: CH Gildethros Silver Talisman, (bka Merlin) Silver Mackerel Tabby
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| Gildethros Wilde Blueberries Blue Silver Mackerel Tabby d.o.b. July 15, 2010 Dam: CH Gildethros Shaded Purrfection, Shaded Silver Patched Sire: CH Gildethros Silver Talisman, (bka Merlin) Silver Mackerel Tabby |
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| The photos above and immediately below are all of Berry at about six to eight weeks old. The first picture dramatizes the difference between black silvers (the bicolor kitten on the left) and blue silvers with Berry on the right. Even though Berry has a lot less silver showing through her pattern, she is much lighter to the eye than the black silver is. I've seen lighter blues and blue silvers in the Turkish Angora family, but most blues are in fact quite dark, i.e. not the light blue that you see Russian Blues dressed in. I've been told that there are in fact different genes for the lighter blue coloring and that I don't yet have it. But my blues are good compared to most I've seen TAs dressed in. You certainly can't mistake them for black the way I have on some TAs I've seen. So bring on those blues! Please be sure to scroll all the way to the bottom of this page to see some adult pictures of Berry. It really is amazing how much silvers brighten up as the coat matures and the silver comes out! But as the coat grows out and the feathers come in, it can be easy to lose sight of how refined some TAs are. And I had honestly forgotten how elegant Berry is until I started browsing through her baby pictures! It really is quite stunning to see an eight or nince week old Turkish Angora kitten with such long, lanky legs and a nice long body like the one you see in the photo below to the right. And wait until you see that silly tail of hers all decked out with feathers! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| I thought for the longest time that the warm tint you see on Berry's nose and paws was what we call tarnish. But I had a great breeder visit this past fall who knows her colors really well and she tells me that this coloring on a blue is actually called patina. She says it's more obvious on a blue silver because the silver does of course lighten and brighten the blue a lot which makes the patina easier to see. To make a short story of it, patina is a good thing on a blue or blue silver whereas tarnish is a bad thing on a black silver. So here I had been thinking that Berry was a bad silver when she is in fact a really great blue! To be honest, I was just so happy to have a blue with great type that I really didn't care about the tarnish. But now that I do know better, I'm deffinitely going to show Berry once I get her coat grown back in after her kittens are weaned. There is a bit of a story here as I did have to clip the fur on her belly because it was so long that her kittens kept getting tangled in it. Some might even say that her coat is too long for a proper Turkish Angora. But I beg to differ. I say that as long as the coat has the correct texture and doesn't matt or snarl up, the longer the better! And you can be sure that Berry's fur is super silky and never needs to be groomed at all. It's just that when she needed to get up to get a snack or use the litter box, her tiny kittens would in fact get their little legs tangled in her belly fur where all baby kittens love to fall asleep while nursing. And poor Berry honestly couldn't walk away from them without dragging one of more kittens along in her otherwise delightful fur. Although the kittens do still get snagged in her tail feathers a bit, there was/is no way I was/am going to clip them off! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Berry is about three and a half months old in the two photos above. She really does look mature for a TA kitten of this age because of that long body and total overall refinement. She doesn't have delicate legs or anything like that, just great overall balance for a young Turkish Angora. And then below at one year old, the silver has finally come out and brightened up that gorgeous blue! I only wish that I'd grabbed a slicker brush to whisk through her tail feathers so they look as fabulous as they really are! I know I had lots of other pictures of Berry that were ready to upload to the website. But they have vanished along with a number of others that I had stashed in a folder that's easy to upload from when I'm on the internet updating the website. I can't even begin to count the number of times that I've had files and photos vanish after one or more TAs went racing across the keyboard. Go figure that it had to be the best of Berry's pictures that are among the missing! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| For now, the only adult photos I have of Berry are the one above and the other to the left. Unfortunately, they were both taken in October 2011 before her fuller, more mature winter garb grew in AND her tail needs a bit of fluffing (above). Until I get some great new pictures of her, you'll just have to take my word for it that Berry's tail really is every bit as fabulous as Miata's is with super long, super silky feathers that invite you to run your hand all the way out to the tip. And Berry is as delightful on the inside as she is on the outside. She honestly doesn't have a bad habit. - And that's saying A LOT for a Turkish Angora! She's polite and sweet while being sassy and silly. A true delight. And now that she's a mom, she's proving to be great at this new role too. I promise to get some better pictures of her once her kittens are old enough to come out into the household with her. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| People often do ask me if I bath or groom my cats before I take their pictures. And the answer is a resounding "No". The two pictures above really are the worst of all of Berry's photos, i.e. the ones that I had filed in her folder (safely it would seem) instead of my "upload" folder that got scrambled with the contents now among the missing. The honest truth is that a TA with a full adult coat and a thick ruff will need a bit of grooming during shedding season. Nothing major by any means, but an occasional brushing out to keep tufts that are shedding out from turning into little matts. It seems as if the fur around the ruff is softer and less slippery so it does tend to tangle a bit when it is coming out. And sometimes there can be a tiny matt at the friction point behind the elbows or on the britches where the fur is also more fluffy. But shedding season only happens twice a year and Turkish Angoras really are a next to no maintenance breed otherwise. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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