Bicolor Ragdoll

The parts of a bicolor

• The V. An inverted white triangle that starts between the eyes and widens down to the muzzle and chin, so the nose sits in white and is pink. On a good bicolor the V is symmetrical and does not reach above the outer corners of the eyes.
• The mask. The color that remains on the face: the ears, the forehead outside the V and the cheeks.
• The legs. White to the top, front and back. Color on a leg is a fault in the show ring and completely harmless in a pet.
• The saddle. Color on the back, from the shoulders to the tail, that comes in slowly and is often patchy for the first year.
• The belly. White, front to back.
• The tail. Fully colored.

Bicolor, mitted, or high mitted?

A mitted has a colored face and colored legs with white mittens on the front paws and white boots behind. A bicolor has white legs all the way up and the white V on the face. A high mitted is a mitted with so much white that it passes for a bicolor, and the honest answer is that unless you are breeding you will never know or care. What you will notice is the face: colored nose, mitted; pink nose in a white V, bicolor.

How the pattern arrives

The white is there from birth, which is the one thing you can see on a newborn Ragdoll: the V and the white legs are visible as a pattern in the fur before any color has arrived to contrast with them. The color on the ears comes at a week or so, the mask fills in over two months, and the saddle takes the longest, sometimes not settling until the second year.

Bicolor in every color

Our bicolors are seal (Pearl and Bambi) and blue (our queen, Ace and Milo). The same pattern exists in chocolate, lilac, flame and cream, and with lynx or tortie over it. A cream bicolor, for what it is worth, is a nearly white cat with a white V, which is a pattern you have to take on trust.

Why bicolor is so popular

Because of the face. The white V opens the expression up and makes the blue eyes look larger and the cat look, to human eyes, younger and kinder. It is the pattern in most of the breed’s photographs and it is the one most people mean when they say "a Ragdoll".