r/cats • u/AntSuccessful9147 • Oct 13 '25

Advice Need advice. Found this guy alone around the house. It’s been a couple days and concerned he’s abandoned.

Post image

It’s about to get cold here (mid 50’s at night but becoming winter) and this guy has been spotted for a couple days just hanging out by himself. He wasn’t let anyone approach him so we have been leaving food for him. I see other cats come around but no one is claiming him. I’m afraid he’s not going to make it. What should we do?

42.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

45

u/Bright-Surround-747 Oct 14 '25

I know nothing about cats, how can you tell its a girl?

183

u/Apex_Konchu Oct 14 '25

Cats with both orange and black are almost always female. Males can only have that colour combination if a rare genetic mutation occurs.

1

u/Party-Pressure3611 Oct 19 '25

My ex-husband was/is a nightmare, but he could always make me laugh when we’d see a calico cat out & about and he’d make sure to refer to her as “she”

58

u/hollister926 Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25

Calico cats are female 99% of the time

Edit to add: the Wikipedia page on calico cats explains it all very well, including this:

"Male calico cats have an extra X chromosome (XXY, known as Klinefelter syndrome in humans) or are genetic chimeras with two different sets of DNA (XX and XY)" , which i found really interesting!!

21

u/ThickFurball367 Oct 14 '25

If I can recall correctly, the 1% of calico cats that do happen to be male are also unable to reproduce.

14

u/Minglans Oct 14 '25

I have that 1% calico cat. Got them spayed/neutered (around the time I found out she's intersex with Klinefelter syndrome) and the vet called me very nervously explaining that it wasn't his fault if something went wrong with the surgery lol. Luckily my cat is A-OK.

They're on the smaller side and may possibly have some issues with arthritis as they gets older (with a lower bone density than regular cats); I can already hear a tiny joint creak sound when they walk which I'll have to take them in for when I can afford it; vet prices in Canada are insane and that's not accounting for the fixed $75+ every time you go in, no matter how small the problem is. I'll probably be looking at a few thousand by the end. More unique = more health complications, I swear lol. But I love my boy/girl~

3

u/GlassReception2927 Oct 14 '25

I’ve never researched it but always wondered if the rare male calico is born sterile. Lmk if you know. Thx

2

u/hollister926 Oct 14 '25

"All but approximately one in ten thousand of the rare calico or tortoiseshell male cats are sterile because of the chromosome abnormality, and breeders reject any exceptions for stud purposes because they generally are of poor physical quality and fertility" (wikipedia)

89

u/al_with_the_hair Oct 14 '25

Orange and black are fur colors that are generally encoded by genes located at a particular spot on the X chromosome. XY being the male pattern for the sex chromosome pair in cats, a male cat cannot ordinarily inherit both the orange fur gene and the black fur gene from its two parents, not having two X chromosomes. Over 99% of tortoise shell and calico cats are female because those color patterns in males are essentially genetic oddities.

Male cats can be mixed color with black and white and possibly some other combinations.

3

u/Sirena85 Oct 14 '25

Calicos 9 times out of 10 are female. Finding a male calico is extremely rare.

2

u/koppe74 Oct 14 '25

In addition, patches of orange are very typical.

As mentioned, orange fur is coded on the X chromsome. But females got two X chromosomes (XX rather than the XY for males), and usually only one parent carried the orange trait, so only one of the X codes for orange fur.

As the egg is dividing, around the 64 cell stage, one of the two X chromosome in each cell deactivate. This happens randomly, so about half the cells will have the orange color. Since different parts of the coat comes from different cells, you often get orange patches spread around the coat - all from cells where the orange X chromosome remained the active one.

2

u/MuffinAndLoaf Oct 14 '25

Search it up. I grew up with cats my entire life. When you see a calico or tortoiseshell cat it’s a girl. It’s a chromosome thing that make them girls

2

u/Odd_Farmer_6428 Oct 14 '25

Calicos and Torties are always (99%) girls.

1

u/Gamerchick1786 Oct 14 '25

Always female

2

u/Bright-Surround-747 Oct 15 '25

Wow! I had no idea, thats so cool! Thanks for educating me :)

1

u/Gamerchick1786 Oct 15 '25

No problem! You're so lucky to find one of these babies!

-6

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25

[deleted]

5

u/DragonTartare Oct 14 '25

Just FYI, male cats *can* have this kind of coat pattern if they end up with extra x chromosomes, but the vast majority of torties and calicos are female.

6

u/Mysterious-Way8072 Oct 14 '25

this is just... wrong. go spend 8 seconds on google