My husband and I went to an exhibition about the solar system at our local natural history museum. There was also an exhibition for children about the human body with really good explanations how genes work, how our ear works, stuff like that.
We came to the part about the eyes and there was an explanation of colorblindness and the different forms together with the tests. You know - the circles with dots where you have to read the number. Anyway, I forgot why but he started reading out the numbers. And well, he got one of them wrong. Not the test for full-on red-green blindness, but he can’t tell certain shades apart.
In hindsight I had noticed that he sometimes confuses names for colors apart from the basic ones or that he doesn’t like it when I identify an object by its color (e.g. “give me the pink one”). But I’d always chalked it up to German not being his mother language.
My ex used to argue with me about colors all the time. It was odd. Then one day he told me he really liked my grey sweater. I was like I don’t own a grey sweater. He said yes you do, and pulled it out of my drawer. It was my light purple sweater. That’s how we found out he was slightly color blind.
I often get into similar “fights”, but because of mismatching colour terms. For example, if Siegfrieda’s coat is “cinza” grey:
For me the colour is a bit too warm to be “cinza” grey, it’s more like “castanho” brown. But my mum insists it’s grey.
(She’s probably in the right, though. My mental colour palette is all fucked up.)
I’d describe your cat’s fur as gray too, but color perception is really weird…
A decade or so ago, there was a big argument online about the color of a dress that some people saw as blue/black and others white/gold:
I find that the names of animal colors can be very…aspirational. Blue dogs are my go-to example.
I have a similar argument with my mother, who claims the tile and fixtures in her (very dated) bathroom are battleship grey.
To me, they’re a light dusky blue, as if you mixed a light shade of grey with baby blue, and they clash horribly with the truly grey marble around her sink.
This argument has existed for 30+ years without resolution.
From that image, I’d say it looks grey, hands down. There doesn’t appear to be any hint of brown there.
Man, colour perception is weird
That’s nuts, I was like why is she deferring to her mom? Cats obviously brown! So weird
I had a tabby that we always described as black and grey, but if you really looked closely, he didn’t really have any grey, it was various shades of tan, and looked grey against the black stripes.
Most people agree with her. But for me calling such a warm tone “grey” is weird, it’s like calling your typical red apple “pink” instead of “red”, you know? To complicate it further I typically refer to fur colour with the same words I’d use for human hair colour, and I’m not sure they don’t map 1:1 with colours used for objects.
(Another situation this pops up is when talking about magenta. But it’s more like a discussion about the “main” colour vs. hue.)
It is! And colour words are weird too. And they somewhat influence your perception, too.
My mom says the dog is black. I say he is gray.
White and gold
All dogs are gold. At least in spirit!
For me he’s mostly black (at least in this picture), but I can get why you’d call him grey as a whole.
I’m surprised this didn’t develop into another fight. How did he react to you saying he was color blind? Or did he figure it out first?
It didn’t turn into a fight, we both thought it was hilarious. He was like wait, is it really purple, then we both laughed about it a bunch and I looked up the color blind tests with the numbers hidden in colored dots and he realized that he could see the numbers in most of them but there were a few that he had to ask me if there really was anything there or if it was just plain dots to mess with people. Afterwards there were times he would start arguing with me about colors again and I’d make a comment about my grey sweater and then we’d both just end up laughing.