Forward bash colors

Question

Is there any way to export the colors of an output of a command?

Let's explain it with a small example:

ls -alh --color=auto

will print the colored contents of the directory, while

ls -alh --color=auto | cat

won't print some color. What I want to know is a trick or a tool, let's call it magic, that restores these commands like \033[1m, so that colors are available for latter processing:

ls -alh --color=auto | magic | cat

or

ls -alh --color=auto | magic >> file

Update:
I'm using ls just for this example, but want to know whether there is a general possibility.

Answer 1

script outputfile command 

will do the trick. e.g:

script capture.txt ls --color=always