This article is from the WSSF 2016 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

By Karen Robbins

Jason Lacy, Facebook
Q We’ve had a dispute over what this girl is since her coat first started coming in. Could someone help us settle? I say Ruby-eyed Russian Silver Capped, my fiancé says ruby- eyed Russian Blue and won’t even acknowledge a marking name. We are probably both wrong.

The hood doesn’t extend any further on the bottom than on the top. I know that one side goes down the neck too far so she’s not show standard Hooded but it’s the only marking on her. The other side goes as far as you see in the pic and both come back to under her jaw at the top of the throat on the bottom.

The color varies with the light. Most of the time she looks silver on the hood but sometimes it looks like an extremely light beige, either way it’s so light that if you aren’t looking you can’t see the marking. If I use flash on my camera, she looks solid white in the picture. I find the color really pretty myself.

Mom was a naked rat with Dumbo ears. The father is a normal rat blue-gray back, white underbelly.

A In the photos she looks like a heavy-marked (mis-marked) Capped (goes too far behind the ears which is common). The notch in the head marking is the telltale sign of it being Capped vs. a Bareback. She is not Hooded as those have a solid head/shoulder area plus the dorsal stripe going down the backbone. The photo to show dad’s color looks like a Russian Blue Berkshire. With mom being Hairless, you can’t really tell what her color is where the markings show. You would have to know what color the fur was when she was a kitten. Not knowing what other colors/genes they both carry doesn’t help in trying to figure out the possible color.

Seeing in person is always best to give an accurate answer regarding colors. In the first photo of the rat in question, on the monitors here when the photo is color corrected, the rat’s color looks like a bluish-tan which if the dad was indeed Russian Blue and there were any ruby-eyed gene rats in the line (Beige or Fawn), then you would have the genetics to make the color Blue-Beige which has ruby eyes and a tan color with a blue tint. Blue-Beige is a color that is very hard to photograph and get the color to show up right in print or on a monitor. Another feature of this color is the ticked/heathered look due to the Russian Blue.

If she didn’t have the ruby eyes and had pink/red eyes instead, her color then looks like either Silver (a pink-eyed Blue) or a Russian Silver (pink-eyed Silver Blue; if it had the ticking/ heathering in the coat as well).

Not many people have bred the Blue-Beige color over the years, same with the Silver or Russian Silver—they are usually byproducts of Blue or Russian Blue breedings.

You can read more on Blue-Beige and Silver on these pages:

• Blue-Beige Rats; Ruby-Eyed Blue Rats
• Russian Blue
• Silver Rat
• Silver vs. Silvered Rat Colors
• The Blue Rat
• Odd Blue Color

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