Seal Point Ragdoll Kittens

What seal means

Seal is genetically black. On a pointed cat the black is expressed only on the cool extremities, and there it reads as a very dark, cool-toned brown, almost black on the ears and the tail tip, a shade lighter on the mask and the legs. The body is never white on an adult seal: it shades to a warm fawn or cream, darker on the back than the belly. The nose leather and paw pads on a seal colorpoint are dark brown; on a seal bicolor the nose is pink because it sits inside the white V.

Seal is the color the breed was founded on and it is still the most common, which is a point in its favor rather than against it: it is the color with the deepest contrast between points and body, and it is the one that looks most like a Ragdoll from across the room.

How the color comes in

A seal kitten shows color earlier and faster than any other, which is why breeders can usually name their seals in the first week while the blues and creams are still guesses. By eight weeks a seal kitten’s pattern is fixed; by a year the points are the adult color; by three years the body has shaded and the cat is, to most eyes, a different animal from the white kitten it was.

Seal or chocolate?

Seal is a cool, dark brown, black at the edges. Chocolate is a warm, milk-chocolate brown, lighter and redder, and it never goes near black. In a kitten the two look alike; by six months the difference is plain, and the nose and paw pads settle it: dark brown on a seal, cinnamon pink on a chocolate. Almost every brown Ragdoll advertised in the United States is a seal. More on brown Ragdolls.

Seal or blue?

Blue is the dilute of seal: the same gene with the pigment thinned, so the points are slate gray instead of dark brown and the body is bluish white instead of fawn. Our queen is blue and our king is seal, and their litters come out roughly half and half, which is why the three kittens on the cat tree in the photograph at the top of the colors page are two blues and a seal.

Seal bicolor, seal mitted, seal colorpoint

Pearl and Bambi are seal bicolors: the white inverted V between the eyes, white legs, a white chest and belly, and seal on the ears, the outer mask, the tail and a saddle. A seal mitted has a full seal mask with white mittens, boots, chin and belly stripe. A seal colorpoint has no white at all and the deepest, most classic look of the three. The patterns, explained.

Living with a seal

Nothing about temperament follows color. A seal is as floppy, as sociable and as quiet as any other Ragdoll. The one practical difference is that seal shows dust and shed hair on a dark sofa less than a blue does, and shows on a white one more.