Maine Coon Colors: Find Your Perfect Flavor!

The Ultimate Guide to Maine Coon Color Variety

Why Ice Cream?

To start, it’s important to clarify that while Maine Coon cats offer a stunning variety of colors and patterns, the possibilties are not truly infinite. In fact, there are about 75 distinct color and pattern combinations you might encounter.

Each cat registry (TICA, CFA, FiFe, WCF, etc) seems to have a different method of labeling certain color and pattern combinations. Thus, it would be nearly impossible to be technically correct on the names for each cat color across the board, so for the purposes of this page, we are simply going to stick with the most widely accepted terminology.

Understanding the possible color and pattern combinations can be quite a challenge, so I have come up with a fun analogy to make it easier. By comparing Maine Coon colors and patterns to different ice cream flavors, mix-ins, and toppings, I hope to make this topic both simple and enjoyable for you. With that, let’s dive right in!

Black Solid

Red Solid

Black and Red Solid, aka Tortoiseshell

Step 1: Choose Your Base Flavor

You may be surprised to learn that there are really only two “base” colors of Maine Coon, followed by their dilute versions. The main colors are black and red. Then there is a third possibility, tortoiseshell– a combination of black and red. The red gene is sex-linked, making red females rarer as they require two red copies to be fully red. One copy of red mixes with black (in females) and results in tortoiseshell; around 99.9% of tortoiseshell cats and their variations are female. The only exceptions are males with two copies of the X chromosome – XXY genotype – a condition called Klinefelter syndrome.

We won’t go too much into genetics, but each basic color also has a dilute version created by combining each color with two copies of the dilution gene – sort of like mixing vanille ice cream into your strawberry to create a lighter pink shade. If you combine the dilute gene with black, you get blue – visually, it looks grey, but the technical term is blue. From my understanding, this is so that “blue” and “lilac” – both grey looking cats visually – can be differentiated. Important to note, though, that Maine Coons do not come in lilac.

The dilute gene combined with red creates the color cream, one of my personal favorites. The dilute version of tortoiseshell, boringly enough, is called blue tortoiseshell. Some may argue there is one more “base color” of Maine Coon, white, but that color and the gene for it play by different rules. The “color” white will be explained in a separate section – “Would You Like it Dipped?”.

Blue Smoke Solid

Cream Ticked Tabby

Blue and Cream Solid, aka Blue Tortoiseshell

Step 2: Choose Your Mix-ins

Let’s mix in some patterns! There are two basic types of patterns: solid, which is essentially the lack of a pattern (a solid coat), and tabby. You can choose only one type of pattern here – a cat cannot be “solid tabby”, it can be either solid OR tabby. We have already introduced quite a few solid cats in the previous section so we will focus on tabby patterns. The Maine Coon breed has 4 possible tabby patterns, which are classic tabby, mackerel tabby, ticked tabby, and spotted tabby. Classic, mackerel, and ticked tabby are the most commonly seen tabby patterns in the breed.

All of the tabby patterns come with a signature “M” on the forehead, as well as white cheeks and a white chin. A common myth is that you can tell a cat is a Maine Coon if it has the “M” on the forehead, but that is simply untrue. Many Maine Coons come in solid patterning (no “M”), and many domestic shorthairs and domestic longhairs, as well as plenty of other breeds, also have the possibility of tabby patterning with the exact same forehead “M”.

Below is a very helpful visual reference of the four possible Maine Coon tabby patterns:

For simplicity’s sake, when combining a tabby pattern with a tortoiseshell “tortie” colored cat, we refer to them as “torbies” – a combination of the words “tabby” and “tortie”. Tabby patterns can be combined with all of the possible Maine Coon base colors, in addition to smoke, silver, and all of the “with white” variations you will see in step 4. For example, you can combine a blue tortoiseshell base coat with bicolor (“with white”) patterning, a mackerel tabby pattern, and the silver gene, to create what would be called a (polydactyl) blue silver mackerel torbie with white.

I will also briefly address the misconception that “tabby cat” is a cat breed – it is not. It’s just a pattern! In fact, just about every breed of cat has a tabby pattern as part of their color and pattern assortment. Most people when calling a cat a “tabby cat” are actually referring to a domestic shorthair, the term for the most common mixed-breed cat in the United States and Canada. This also applies to “tuxedo” and “calico” cats – these are colors combinations, not cat breeds.

Step 3:
Want Any More Mix-ins?

Smoke, Silver, Shaded, Shell, & the Elusive Golden Maine Coon

Some coloring variations have become very popular in the Maine Coon breed – and with good reason! The dominant melanin inhibitor gene “I” is responsible for all of the fun silver, smoke, shaded, and shell mutations in the Maine Coon breed, and the inhibitor gene’s presence combined with the agouti (tabby) gene as well as a confusing group of interacting genes, the wide-band genes, result in the very rare golden Maine Coons.

We’ll start off with smoke and silver. Smoke and silver are virtually the same thing, smokes can produce silvers and vice versa. The big difference between the two is the tabby gene, agouti. Lack of the tabby gene – solid patterning – combined with the inhibitor gene results in a smoke coat. When the inhibitor gene is combined with a tabby coat, you get silver.

Without going into *too* much detail, essentially, silver and smoke can be added to any of the base colors, and work with both solid and tabby patterns. Solid patterned cats with the inhibitor gene will always be smoke, tabby patterned cats with the gene will always be silver. You can get blue smoke (solid), black smoke (solid), red smoke (solid), black smoke tortoiseshell (solid), blue silver (tabby), black silver (tabby), red silver (tabby), cream…you get it. This is why asking for a “smoke” or “silver” Maine Coon without specifying a base color tends to frustrate your breeder. (:

Shaded and shell cats are more extreme versions of silver and smoke. Where silver and smoke affect around 50% of the hair shaft, some mutation along the way was able to increase that to anywhere from 75-90% of the hair shaft, resulting in an extremely light – but not completely white – coat.

Differentiating shaded and shell is the same idea as silver and smoke. Shaded is the extreme version of silver (tabby patterned) and shell is the extreme version of smoke (solid pattern). Those closer to the 75% range are often called “high smoke” and “high silver“. These two are not officially recognized colors, instead defaulting on paper to basic smoke and silver.

It’s worth noting that shaded and shell cats often come with a negative stigma, which in many cases is well-deserved. A significant part of the issue stems from a particular cattery, often referred to as a “cat mill,” which is responsible for producing most of these lines. This cattery neglects important aspects of feline health, permits excessive inbreeding, and fails to prioritize genetic diversity in their breeding practices.

You might observe that many shaded and shell cats look sickly, and seem to have abnormally high rates of FIP. With higher levels of inbreeding, immune systems suffer and often fail. There are a couple of wonderful breeders working hard to bring diversity back into these colors through foundation work, so we can have hope that their future will be brighter.

Smoke, High Smoke, Shell - Solid Patterned

Silver, High Silver, Shaded, Golden - Tabby Patterned

Step 4: Add a Twist

Just as you can blend chocolate and vanilla or strawberry and vanilla to create a “twist” cone, you can combine any Maine Coon colors and patterns with white to introduce even more variety. The only exception is the white color itself, but we’ll discuss that separately.

The “with white” Maine Coons are separated into 4 different categories, depending on the amount of white they posess. These categories are van, harlequin, bicolor, and “other”.

Van have the highest amount of white, typically with their base color only showing on their head and tail. Harlequin have slightly less white, with spots of their base color more towards the middle of their bodies as well as on the head and tail.

Bicolor are what you most often think of when you hear the term “tuxedo cat”, they are primarily their base color and have white “socks”, a white chest, and sometimes little spots of white spread randomly near their head and arms.

The “other” category typically applies to those who have very little white spots, for example a little white spot on the belly or under the chin and nowhere else. It seems to be interchangeable with bicolor sometimes, but officially remains a separate category in most registries.

While tortoiseshell bicolors – commonly called calicos – and black bicolors – commonly called tuxedo cats – are the most popular form of the “with white” varieties, there are also many more options. Cream with white, blue with white, blue tortoiseshell smoke with white… the possibilities are endless!

Step 5: Would You Like it Dipped?

The White Maine Coon

When you dip an ice cream cone into chocolate, the chocolate covers up just about everything underneath. Your strawberry twist (or whatever flavor you love best) remains the exact same underneath, but all you can see now is the chocolate hard shell. Then, often, a little bit of the hard shell gives way and you can see a little bit of the hidden ice cream poking through. This is exactly how the white gene works for Maine Coons!

Let me explain. The “W” gene is something many refer to as a “masking” gene, covering up whatever lays underneath. All white Maine Coons carry their “real” color underneath the white mask, be it red, black smoke, blue tabby, etc. Typically, especially when white Maine Coons are young, the color hidden underneath will spill through as a couple tiny dots of color on the top of their head, right between the ears. Pretty cool, right?

This means that white Maine Coons are essentially surprise packages when it comes to breeding (only color wise, please don’t breed any cat without knowing its health and structure!), and you will often not know the exact color and pattern hidden underneath until you have seen the offspring from them. Take, for example, our darling queen Clio, who is young right now and shows two black dots on the top of her head. We know that black is a color she carries underneath because of this, but it does not tell us if that black is in combination with red (tortoiseshell), tabby, bicolor, silver, solid… all we know is that the base color black is one piece of the puzzle.

The white gene is often associated with deafness – but not all white cats are deaf. Those statistically higher at risk for deafness are those with blue eyes, and/or those from two white parents (receiving two copies of the “W” gene). White cats require a little extra responsibility to breed, because all white breeding cats and any white offspring should always be BAER tested for deafness, and those with deafness or any degree of hearing loss should not be included in breeding programs.

Step 6: Any Extras?

Extra toe beans, that is! Some Maine Coons have polydactyl feet, which means extra toes. Normally, cats have 18 toes in all – 5 on each front leg, and 4 on each back leg. A Maine Coon with 18 toes is called a “standard” Maine Coon. Polydactyl Maine Coons can have up to 7 toes on each foot, for a maximum total of 28 toes. That’s a lot of beans!

The polydactyl genes are a bit finicky. Polydactyly is a dominant trait with incomplete penetrance and variable expressivity. What does that mean? Basically, not all kittens from polydactyl parents will receive polydactyl paws, and not all polydactyl kittens from polydactyl parents will receive the same number of toes as their polydactyl parent. Here is a great example:

Our Queen Amalfea is a 77/55 polydactyl, meaning that she has seven toes on each front foot and five on each back foot. In her first litter, she produced seven kittens. Two of the kittens are “standard”, aka non polydactyl. They have 55/44 paws like all standard cats. Five of her kittens are polydactyl, but they do not all have the same number of toes as their mom. Two of them are 77/55, one is 76/55, one 65/55, and one is 66/44 – only polydactyl on the front legs. Weird, right?

There are multiple variants of polydactyly, the two most common being hemingway and snowshoe. Hemingway polydactyl means that counting from the outside in, there are four toes, then a dewclaw or two in the middle, and then one to two toes on a separate pad. These are commonly called “thumbs” because, well, that’s what they look like. Our Queen Amalfea is a hemingway polydactyl.

Snowshoe or “pattypaw” polydactyly (I have also once seen it called ‘hamburger’ poly) means that there is no dewclaw and no separation of the paw pads. They have one giant foot, which was believed to help the original Maine Coons traverse through the deep snow in Maine.