Consider yourself lucky. My shelter adopted boy has run me over $1500 now since December. Most of that was a hospital stay with a URI. Most recently it was xrays. (He got an antibiotic for his breathing and a laxative…it seems he is quite literally full of shit)
He’s actually close to Edison in age, which is weird because Edison is three times as big and a very different cat (well, of course he is - we’ve had him since kittenhood.) Trust me, it may be peaceable kingdom now, but come 9 or so when they’re most active it’s Scratch N’Bite Olympics. I don’t even know how Eddles makes the noise he does.
He is pretty quiet when he plays with the little wobbly thing.
We have shown that sexual dimorphism is 32% among orange cats, whereas it is only 16% among non-orange cats ( Pontier et al. 1995 ). Furthermore orange males are heavier than non-orange males, whereas orange females are lighter than non-orange females for all age classes ( Jones & Horton 1984; Pontier eat al. 1995 ). In addition orange males are strongly suspected to be more aggressive than non-orange cats ( Pontier et al. 1995).
and…
Because of their aggressivity, orange males may be involved in fights more often and at a younger age than non-orange males. Orange males could be under selective pressure for the earliest age possible at first mating. To reproduce at an early age, orange males should have high growth rates during early life. This selection for early reproduction could account for the large body weight of orange males at a given age compared to non-orange males.
From here ( warning - pdf ): http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1688870&blobtype=pdf
It’s just a statistical trend of course, but one I still find interesting.
Why would the orange ones be under selective pressure for early mating? Just because they stick out for predators?
Also, I thought all the orange ones were males? Or am I confused? (Eddles has a great big body and a tiny little head. I always expected him to grow up HUGE - he’s actually only medium-large. 12 pounds or so, and the vet says his weight is healthy.)
No, because they are more aggressive. Higher aggression should be correlated with higher levels of FIV infection ( transmitted through bites ) and in the study I linked to above that is exactly what they found in ( feral ) orange males. As FIV develops as a disease later in life, long after the initial infection ( it functions like a feline AIDS ), it would advantage animals prone to such infections to breed at a younger age, before the disease manifests itself.
Only a little. Orange males are more common, but females are not unusual. I had one ( she was a tiny thing, too ). The difference is the sex-linked calico trait, that females ( or a rare Klinefelter’s male ) can express, but normal males cannot. So males and females that are homozygous for orange end up orange. But a heterozygous female with the orange trait will end up as some variant of calico. A heterozygous male ends up…orange. Hence more orange males.
Well remember this was a population-level study ( actually several populations ). I assume it is probably best to think of this “orange effect” as a modifier of an individual cat’s genetic makeup. So if you had a litter of kittens from two smallish cats, you might end up with three males ( one orange ) and two females ( one orange ), all of whom will end up smallish as cats go. But the orange male might be 5 or 10% larger than he would have been otherwise. Meanwhile the orange female might be 5 or 10% smaller than she would have been otherwise ( obviously I’m pulling these percentages out of my ass, but you get the gist ).
Multiple researchers, starting with Dominique Pontier, have charted a clear rural-urban divide in expression of orange phenotypes in Europe. In rural areas, with lower cat densities, the mating system is polygynous and larger, stronger, older males more successfully monopolize mating with females, who consequently show high mate fidelity. In urban areas with much higher cat densities, mating is promiscuous, at a younger age, with low female mate fidelity. In the rural areas where strength, size and aggression thus count for more, orange cats are more common than in urban regions.
I only skimmed the article - did they pose a reason for the initial orange aggression trait, or is it just “the way they are”?
This is really fascinating.
Something else really fascinating? We haven’t hit evening yet, so it’s hard to tell, but today the other cats have been much, much more accepting of the new guy, allowing him to play in certain reindeer games… and I think he’s been quieter.
I actually only have read the abstract from Pontier’s 1995 paper, so I don’t really have a definitive answer. But I would assume it is part and parcel of the sexual selection allowing male orange cats to have an edge in certain reproductive scenarios. The trade off being perhaps higher mortality rates from parasitism and compeititive stress ( dominant males apparently do die earlier ). For the curious an entire Ph.D thesis on FIV and its impact on domestic cat population biology: http://biomserv.univ-lyon1.fr/txtdoc/THESES/COURCHAMP/TheseCOUF(en).pdf
By the way skimming what I’ve already written, I just know some pedantic smartass ( like me 
) is going to call me on my comments on orange cat genetics above. It’s slightly more complicated than what I wrote above - the basic issue is that the orange gene just isn’t carried on the Y chromosome ( so technically you can’t have a homozygous male, as there is always only one copy of the orange gene ).
Ah, see? Before you know it they’ll be hoisting toasts of Quinta de Noval Vintage Port to one another and joining together to sing the Marseillaise :). With any luck Greystoke will teach Edison and Dewey how to get more attention by making more noise :D.
Eh, I spoke too soon. Eddles is making that scary snorting noise at the new guy again.
So orange is essentially like color blindness? My dad’s color blind, so I have to be a carrier, so assuming my mate is not color blind (which would be expressed) half my male children and a quarter of my female children would be colorblind?
Snorting noise? That’s a new one.
Sorta. Only a female that gets a dominant orange and a recessive orange will end up a mosaic, i.e. a calico. For a female, homozygous dominant = orange, homozygous recessive = non-orange, heterozygous = calico ( or the equivalent, like tortoiseshell ).
Yeah, he hisses when he’s just a little mad, but when Stokie has him really riled up he makes this… well, it kind of sounds like when a bull alligator is pissed off. Kind of a snorting roaring thing.
Feliway can often help cat behavior problems.
Maybe the DSM now recognizes collecting anything - stamps, records, cars - as stemming from the same root pathology?
I know the New York Times has an unofficial editorial policy that any article about a “collector” must also include the words “obsessive” or “obsession.”
The hilarity can continue in IMHO. Moved.
samclem General Questions moderator