Male Calico

[Vanilla_Rat]

Just a quick question...can there be male calico cats?

I have grown up hearing and believing that there are no male calicos and that they always die at birth.Is this true? My cousin claimed to of seen a adult male calico,but I have NEVER heard of this.

[Fertmom]

Yes it is possible, but rare. Here is the explanation if you want all the technical reasons
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?q...9225519AApNVAu

[jewels]

My mother always told me that if a male cat was calico then he was retarded. We somehow finally came accross a male calico and he seemed fine. He was a bit of a scaredy-cat but normal to say the least.

[jewels]

I just looked at your link and it was talking about Orange tabby females. We had a whole family of female orange tabbies! (Who were fully tabby - no white feet or anything)

We started out with one. Then a few years later we got her sister, whom had kittens where she had one orange tabby boy, who in turn "fooled around with" another mama cat we had, then she had two orange tabby girls.

Now I've heard it twice that orange tabby girls are rare...
I would've never known!

[kathydip]

I have heard that orange females are rare. I was told that calicos are girls and orange kitties are boys. But my first kitty (named Bunny) was an orange girl. She was a character. She could even say Mom and would stand outside my mom's bedroom door and call her! I still have a thing for orange cats.

[hermitman64]

That's very interesting.

I was always told that calico males did not exist. Thanks for the excellent link.

[Keritsubo]

Coloring of a male not occuring often made sense in the explanation. Though I didn't really get why orange was rare in females. Not as common perhaps it seemed but not as difficult as the male being tri colored.

I was told male calicos/torties were rare but not orange females. My aunt had a creamy orange female with amber eyes. Her name was Abby Louise. I miss her and the others.

[jennawing]

Yellow is sex-linked in every species. It is bound to the X chromosome. Females are XX, Males are XY. So, the yellow gene expresses itself differently in males and females- as a calico or tort in a female and as a ginger in a male. The yellow is an incomplete dominant gene- which basically means that it is generally overwritten by true dominant genes- which explains why you rarely see a ginger female. In order to get a ginger female, the dam will have to carry two yellow genes and the male one yellow gene. That does not mean that both cats have to be yellow- but carry yellow.

Male kittens are not born calicos/torts because the black gene is involved in these colors- and black is a true dominant and overpowers/taints the yellow.

I had a female ginger once in a foster litter- of all the litters I have fostered- there were 9 ginger kittens born- only one of those female.

[jennawing]

Yellow is a sex-linked gene in every species. Yellow is bound to the x chromosome.

females are xx, males are xy

Yellow is an incomplete dominant gene, which means that it can be overpowered or diluted by true dominant colours like black

Yellow generally acts as calico/tort in females and ginger in males. In order to produce a ginger female, both parents must carry yellow. Tort and calico require the addition of the black gene- which dominates yellow. Tort/calico does not show up in males because a male can carry only one yellow since it has only one x chromosome- and it requires two yellow to counteract black to produce a tort/calico.

[jennawing]

Sorry for the double post- being new here my posts are not showing up right away so when I tried to edit, I thought I had deleted it. Oh well, same info- just written slightly differently.

[Vanilla_Rat]

You know what? I NEVER seen a female orange cat,they are always males...but I never thought anything of it,because I never heard anything bout them before!

[Nikko]

This is all news to me! I was always wondering why my ex-friend was surprised when she saw that my black and white male cat, China, had a brown patch on his stomach. Now I know. Thanx for the info!

[Ambieruns10]

I remember when I was young, someone said that if you found a Male Calico it would be worth a lot of money because they are really rare, lol. Thats pretty much the only thing that I have heard. I have never thought about female tabbys though. Thats pretty interesting.

[Angelnstuff]

i found a calico male kitten when i was 12 or so, i was sitting outside one night on our front porch and i heard it crying across the street, i looked everywhere for it but i couldnt tell where the crys were coming from, finally i found him, he was inside the bottem of a car i had to pull him out by his tail, the poor thing was terrified and full of fleas. i think it was actually a alley cat, as my moms neighborhood was full of stays that year. Sadly my mom simply saw it as another stray, she made me keep it in the bathroom, so i spent the rest of the night sitting in the bathroom with him picking fleas off and she gave it to a friend of a friend of someone she knew. it killed me to give him away. the person she gave it to prolly sold it to the highest bidder. poor calli

[GeishaGirl]

Quote: Originally Posted by Vanilla_Rat Just a quick question...can there be male calico cats? I have grown up hearing and believing that there are no male calicos and that they always die at birth.Is this true? My cousin claimed to of seen a adult male calico,but I have NEVER heard of this.

I did remember seing some little male organs on the calico once!! FIRST time I EVER seen once so I thought you could get them!! Yeah, I never noticed that I never seen a Ginger female, I THINK we did ONCE have one when Fluff was not spayed a long time ago.