r/cats Calico 26d ago

Cat Picture - Not OC Searching for the lost toy

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u/ArtistAyaya 26d ago

the way hes holding his buddy hahaha

66

u/Material-Scale4575 26d ago

"She" is holding her buddy. Tricolor=female

57

u/UnGatito 26d ago

Not always though, there are make tricolor cats, just not as many.

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u/ThePocketPanda13 26d ago

Yes, but theyre even more rare than an orange female. Around %20-25 of orange cats are female, while %0.03 tricolored cats are male.

The reason for this is because, to simplify it a whole lot because genetics is complicated, the orange gene is essentially a recessive gene for females but not for males.

Tricolors are more complicated, so without getting into the "why" im just going to leave it at the conclusion that the tricolor pattern requires 2 X chromosomes. In order to have a male tricolor he would have to have XXY chromosomes, a genetic defect. Not to worry though, besides being slightly more prone to certain diseases and being sterile this genetic defect has almost no impact on your cats health

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u/afeeqo 26d ago

Also to add, I had a cat who gave birth to a litter and 1 was a short hair calico boy….. this will sound gruesome… but my other male cat(the one that didn’t mate with the female as he was new to the house) killed it months later… there was only 4 from the litter.. I was so sad and devastated… there were 3 males and 1 female from that litter too… the other 2 males wasn’t even bothered by the male and was even well accepted…. I don’t know how true that tomcats sees male calico as a threat or not but I was devastated… I was young and wasn’t well off and found the mama cat with the other cat together out in the rain… and didn’t had much to neuter/spay them as we weren’t able to afford since it was expensive, this was around 25 years ago… till this day I remember it so vividly. I cried for days… I tried to hate on that male cat but it was just a cat… I love them all so dearly…