Cat Coat Color and Pattern Artistic License

In cartoons, comics, animated movies and TV shows, and other fictional media (even more realistically drawn cats like in Warrior Cats by Erin Hunter), there are cats with coat colors and patterns that would be impossible in real life. This doesn’t need to be an outright green, blue, purple, or magenta cat, which are clearly impossible in real life. It could just be a solid orange cat or an all-white cat with a black nose.

General Examples of Cat Coat Color and Pattern Artistic License Include:

1. True solid orange and cream cats (Red/orange/ginger and cream cats can be genetically non-agouti or solid, but even they still show the tabby pattern at least a little. Orange and cream cats that don’t show the tabby pattern much are said to have “low-contrast” patterns.)
2.  Black noses on all-white cats and any cat without solid black or seal point Siamese fur (i.e., an orange, cream, cinnamon, fawn, chocolate, lilac, or grey cat with a black nose.), with or without white spotting.
3.  Tabby cats with stripes on the back and not on the legs. (Tabby stripes on a mackerel tabby cat are usually more distinct on the legs, and there are tabby cats with stripes on the legs and not on the back.)
4.  The variation of the white spotting pattern the fictional cat has doesn’t show up in real life. Examples include:

• The black, grey, tabby, orange, cream, e.t.c. cat that has the whole belly and/or chest be white but the feet are left colored (A cat can have a white locket or button marking on the throat, chest, and/or belly without having white paws though.)
• The cat is white but the paws, face, muzzle, and/or belly left colored (The white part of the white spotting pattern starts on the chest, belly, and paws. The last areas of the body left colored are the tail, top of head, and ears.)

Specific Examples of White Spotting Pattern Artistic License:

• Penelope Pussycat from Looney Tunes is a black cat with a white chest, belly, and muzzle but not feet. Real life cats with white chests, bellies, and muzzles also have white feet.

Specific Examples of Nose Color Artistic License:

• Heathcliff and his girlfriend, Sonya in Heathcliff and The Catillac Cats have a black nose even though they are an orange cat and white cat respectively. Orange cats and white cats have pink noses in real life.
• The titular character of Top Cat and the five other members his gang all have black noses even though none of them are black cats.
• Tom of Tom and Jerry is a grey or blue and white cat with a black nose. Realistically, he would have a pink because he has a white muzzle or as grey fur is a dilute of black fur, his nose should be the dilute of a black nose, which is grey.

Other Specific Examples:

• Sawyer from Cats Don’t Dance is an all white cat with a cream-colored face. Real life cats that appear all white with cream faces are cream point Siamese and also have cream colored paws, ears, and tail. Also, since they are Siamese point cats, they would have blue eyes in real life, instead of Sawyer’s orange eyes.