Just an update to say I solved my own problem by adopting one boy and one girl. They’re rescues, brother and sister, about 8 months old and have lived pretty much all their lives in one room. Now they are in a large 3 bedroom house and are kind of freaked out about it, but after almost a week they are getting braver every day. I think “she” is bonding to my DH and “he” to me, so far. They have lousy names so I will change them once the correct names come to me. And here is the requisite picture. Naming suggestions are welcome.
Awe, they are cute!!
Awwww. Which one is which? A friend of mine adopted a brother sister pair. (Both were very sweet & friendly the boy more so than the girl and more mellow too. He named them Bubby and Sissy. 
Wow, those could be my cats from eight years ago (updated pics)! (They are Cobalt and Rhodium, but I suspect you’ll prefer something else. I also like Pepper and Ginger, but then you’d have to deal with having a boy named Ginger.)
Selena for the grey tabby, and Marmaduke for the big ginger boy (it’s like Marmalade but not).
Such pretty kitties!
Brandy and Bourbon? Bailey and Bourbon?
Yes, the yellow/tan is the guy. (How did you guys know that?) Current names are Roscoe and Betsy (ugh). SIL suggested Pepper for the girl and stick with Roscoe (no) and MIL said Bob and Betsy (no). But that’s two votes for Pepper. It makes me think of Police Woman (wasn’t her name Pepper?)
And Wow indeed, ENugent, your two looked exactly like my kids! I hope mine grow up as big and healthy as yours apparently did. All my cats so far have been jumbo-sized and these two little guys can get into places I didn’t know cats could get.
I kinda like Bubba and Sissy but we’ll keep getting to know them and maybe they will tell us their names.
It’s a cat yin-yang! 
He picked Bubby and Sissy because he said no matter what he NAMED them, that’s what he’d end up calling them.
There’s just not enough Squee!!! in the world. Those two are just brimming over with personality.
The gene for orange coats in cats is sex-linked and so “solid” orange ( white doesn’t count ) cats tend to be disproportionately, but not exclusively male. Similarly it is why virtually all calico/tortoiseshell cats are female. Also orange males tend towards the bulkier end of the spectrum ( relative to other males ), while orange females tend the other way towards the punier side ( relative to other females ). And your lad looks a tad on the bulky side ;).
Very handsome cats. Howabout Alexander and Cleopatra? The fancifully named Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene were twins from the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
You’ll have good bonding with littermates!
I’ve never worried with cats bonding. Whenever we’ve gotten a new cat, he or she would be thrown into the herd and the others would be told, “This is your new brother/sister. Get over it.”
Territorial spats are looked upon as human entertainment.
A catless home is empty and cold. I must have babies around me. And I don’t care how old they get, all cats are babies to me!
~VOW
For some reason, we’ve always had girl cats. They’ve been plenty fiesty, and not shy at all. Our current one is a beautiful, jet black artifact:- she’s been known to wake me up by licking me. So not very shy at all.
(In truth, I’m working to organise my wife so she forgets long enough about getting her “snip” organised that we have a litter of her kittens. I’ll organise homes for them all, but Shelly is too beautiful not to have offspring. As is my wife, whom I’ve just realised is reading this over my shoulder. Bye).
Our guys are litter mates, and they still squabble at times. Never all that seriously, but there’s very definitely a ‘pesky younger brother, annoyed older brother’ vibe at times between the two of them.
Though, since we got them from a shelter we have no way of knowing what the actual birth order was.
When I adopted my two cats, I wanted two girls so the person I was adopting from brought the three girls from the litter for me to pick from. I went with the two that seemed more bonded to each other.
They were about 10 weeks old when I adopted them. I kept all the regular vet visits to get their shots, etc. When they were about six months old, I boarded them over the holidays, and it was during that visit, that apparently the boy bits were discovered.
They ended up staying at the vet to get fixed and no problems with their marking things in the home. They still have “girl” names but at least their collars are now blue.
The only difference I think is that they are maybe bigger full grown (not fat) than if they were girls. The more independent one may have had some issues if he hadn’t been fixed but really no significant behavior problems and I don’t think they are any messier than if they had been girls.
(Oh and the bonding… they still snuggle up together for their naps like they did as kittens).
What a cute pair! I’m glad you got two bonded ones, love the muted colors.
I’ve never owned a female cat that was particularly cuddly, or tended to be anything other than snooty and hissy with other cats. I have a bonded pair of boys now. And my neighbor and I feed (and trap and speuter when we can) local strays.
There’s an odd couple that we feed. I think the big one (GM, for Gray Male) and Bob (because he has no tail, vet said it was lost in some sort of accident when he was a kitten) are, I think, father and son. GM is a really BIG solid grey tom cat, who has so far resisted all efforts to trap him - he is quite feral. Bob is very undersized. We think he was born early this spring. I was able to trap him and get him snipped. They are always together; they show up to eat at my house early in the morning, or at the barn down the road in the evenings.