I was looking at these two this morning, Rags and Marmalade, and it occurred to me that I've never known either a male calico or a female ginger-cat. Now, I'm already aware of the calico genetics, so it's very unlikely that I ever will meet a male of the patchy persuasion. But orange kitties? No girls?
So I went looking for the scoop. Here you go. They exist, but they're not very common. 3:1 ratio of orange males to orange females. It's all in the X-chromosomes.
They're five months now. We found a home on a farm for these two as the Anti-Mouse Brigade, and they'll be setting off for that in the next week or two. Two others, Bleach and Badger, went to live the soft life as indoor kitties with another family in town, who were finding mice indoors.
That leaves Maggie, my black and white tuxedo cat, and the only one who purrs when we pick her up, purrs and wants to kiss and cuddle. She's staying. So we'll have a mere three cats patrolling our premises. Seems like so few after seven!
4 comments:
How very interesting. We have a ginger girl, my avatar :) she's 10.
We had never seen an all ginger girlie before that and were quite surprised. I have known a ginger and white female cat, but she had more white than ginger.
So you're one of the lucky ones!
Rags & Marmalade are a nice looking pair and have names I could've provided them, and I'm sure they'll enjoy their new mousing career.
We had a beloved orange cat named Maggie when our kids were growing up. I brought her home as a tiny fluffy kitten and our young Collie/Golden Retriever mix, Easy, thought she was his baby.
He carried her everywhere, gently, by the nape of her neck, licking her so much that, for a time, she developed a hairless band around her neck from all his licking and carrying.
But Maggie loved Easy and slept curled up in the long fur of his chest and neck.
After she was fully grown mature cat (and her one & only litter of kittens was given away),she adopted our kids as her own.
Anytime they weren't feeling well, or were sad about something, Maggie would lick the hair on their heads for long spells, sharing the loving gesture she had learned from Easy.
Thankfully, neither of them went bald...
Good morning Jim,
What a lovely story! I'm a little sorry about your childrens' lack of bald-spots though - it would have been better, somehow... ;-)
Rags and Marmalade got picked up yesterday. They used tp rassle constantly in the back porch, and I kind of missed the show this morning. Maggie missed them too, thought maybe we'd snuck them into the house when she wasn't looking, so she stood at the door and yelled for quite a while. Poor baby! She was chilly last night, I think. I'm going to have to rig her up a snugglier bed.
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