White Ragdoll Cat

Why Ragdoll kittens are born white

A Ragdoll is a pointed cat. The enzyme that makes its pigment is heat-sensitive and only works below normal body temperature, so pigment forms on the cooler parts of the body, the ears, the face, the legs and the tail, and not on the warm trunk. In the womb a kitten is warm all over, so it is born with no pigment anywhere. It is not a white cat; it is a colored cat whose color has not been switched on yet.

When the color arrives

The order is always the same: ears, then tail, then the mask and legs, then the body shading over years. The speed depends on the color. Seal shows in the first week. Blue takes three or four. Cream can take two months to show at all and a year to be obvious. Rossi is a cream point at eight weeks in the photograph at the top of this page, and she is the reason this page exists: people see her and ask for the white one.

What a white adult Ragdoll is

One of three things. A cream point, whose pale apricot points on a white body read as white from a distance. A lilac point, whose frosty pink-gray points on a magnolia body do the same. Or a blue-eyed white, a cat carrying the dominant white gene brought in from another breed, which masks whatever color is underneath; those cats are not pointed Ragdolls and not every registry accepts them. We breed the first and would tell you honestly if a kitten of ours were the third.

Why the palest Ragdolls are the hardest to photograph

A white body against a white blanket in daylight loses the points entirely. If you are choosing a pale kitten from photographs, ask for one taken on a dark background in shade, and ask to see the tail, which is always the first place the color shows.

Keeping a pale coat pale

A cream or lilac shows every mark. A damp cloth under the eyes each day, a brush twice a week and a litter that does not dust are the whole routine. Ragdolls rarely need bathing and a pale one needs it no more often than a seal; it just shows the need sooner.