howdy howdy! today we are gunna talk about cat coloring…
over 99% of calico cats are female! the 1% that are male have an extra X chromosome- meaning they are XXY- and are (almost always) infertile.
on the flip side, upwards of 80% of orange cats are male. the orange fur gene is also on the X chromosome- but for a female cat to be orange she must inherit the orange coloring from both her X chromosomes.. meaning both her parents must be carriers (so her mom just has to carry the orange gene, but her dad must actually be orange)
in my experience, and the experiences of those i’ve spoken with, orange cats seem to be more affectionate that your average gato. my childhood orange cat sanga (pronounced song-ah), is an avid gift-giver. he started by finding the largest leaves in the neighborhood and bringing them to our front porch… then he started stealing wiffle balls from our neighbor (he brought us 28 balls before we figured out who he was stealing them from!). after that, he started bringing gifts from within the home- bras & CDs & anything in a plastic bag. sanga is 17 now & can’t bring us gifts anymore- but he only stopped a couple of months ago. below is a recent picture of our handsome sanga, taken by my husband on one of his lomography cameras.
two years ago we had an orange stray cat appear in our backyard & begin feasting on our cat kibble. he started greeting me every single time i went outside & following me around so of course we had to adopt the lil dude. we named him pepe ( a man of many nicknames, peppers, pepsi, peepee, pepperoni, the list goes on…) & he is another high quality cat. (pictured below)(also a lomography shot taken by my dearest Jonas)
i’ve just never met an orange cat that wasn’t exceptionally friendly. whenever people tell me they don’t like cats, i want to advise them to go adopt an orange cat and see what happens. i did some cursory googling on what makes orange cats superior…. but nothing conclusive. and again, this is a nice one to wonder about.
okay and one more cute orange cat fact…. they have a tendency to develop black freckles- which can be seen around their nose, eye, and mouth. but it turns out… they may be freckled all over their body :0 ! check out pepe’s face freckles
