Thread: Can a Tarnished Silver Classic Maine Coon Become "Untarnished"?

Just seen this thread and thought I'd share our experiences of 2 of our 5 coonies. When we got Bran he was registered as a brown tabby (parents are a blue solid and tortie tabby). His breeders thought he was a cold brown tabby. We loved his dark brown colouring and copper eyes and he has indeed turned out to be a very striking cat. We started showing this year, and took Bran along to a show in the SLH section. He was awarded a Premier certificate, but an experienced judge in a side class said he was the wrong colour and took the time to explain to us and the breeders (who were also at the show) why she thought this - she was lovely.

Her opinion was that he's a very heavily tarnished silver tabby and would probably lose out to other brown tabbies in the SLH section. We were really interested as we've always wondered why he didn't have the same cream/beige underparts like other brown tabbies. She recommended we show him in the Pedigree Pets section, which we did this Saturday. He won 2 Best in Colours at the double show!

In the meantime, we've got another silver tabby who is now 6 months old. Wolfie's parents are a red tabby and a blue tortie smoke. He is a very clear silver classic tabby, and when you see the 2 of them together, Bran and Wolfie look very much alike (they are related anyway). The only difference is Bran is MUCH darker and his dark silver is more like a dark brown. Bran definitely did not look like a silver tabby as a baby.

At some point I'll probably apply to have his colour officially changed on his paperwork, but he is such a gorgeous cat that it doesn't matter at all that the colour was wrongly registered initially - we were looking for a brown tabby. Maine Coon kittens go to their new homes at 12 weeks and I think it can be very difficult to get the colour right. I've seen a fair few instances of colour changing - red tabby/red self, blue/blue silver, red silver tabby/red silver shaded. They take so long to develop to maturity that I guess sometimes people get the colour wrong.