Occasional bathing is required to keep the coat clean, healthy and beautiful. Time and commitment to a daily grooming routine is required of the Persian owners, and most will enjoy this quality time spend with their cats.

For showing, Persian kittens may also need bathing, especially if they are of the lighter colour breeds. Therefore, in choosing a show specimen it is important that full consideration is given to temperament, as well as to health and beauty.

The Persian's beautiful coat comes in a wide range of colours and patterns, including parti-colours, bi-colours, shaded, smokes, solids and tabbies. Persians are divided into seven colour divisions for the purpose of competition, which also contributes to its great popularity among cat fanciers and those who wish to share life with it. However, the overall beauty and elegance of this particular cat breed gives it the regal bearing which is respected by fanciers around the world.

If of the same colour all over, Persian kittens are known as Self-Coloured in Britain and as Solid-Colored in the U.S., and these varieties are usually known by their colour in their official names. There are Black, Blue, Red, Cream and White Persians in the Self-Colours, and all are very similar in their massive build and very good type and conformation. The Black is, of course, jet black, a real witches' cat with deep orange or copper eyes blazing from his midnight fur.

Persian cats with the Himalayan coat pattern seen in Siamese have been bred quite successfully and are known as Colourpoint Persians in Britain and as himalayans in the U.S. They have pale body colouring and blue eyecolour and are bred with "points", that is the extremities of the body-ears, nose, toes and tail-of different colours.

Among the new varieties are several very pretty pastel-coloured Persians, bred by the mixing of the red and the silver genes.