Control the Fur Color using a Color Map

There is a hair material located in the Material Palette called Textured Hair.

Simply click the Material Palette tab above the network editor, and drag and drop the Textured Hair (under Organic) from the list on the left side onto your grid object, and choose your color map. You can also have different color maps for the root and the tip. For more information on this material, see the textured hair material help.

In this example, an odd shaped surface has leopard colored fur based on a color map.