I have a little tortoise shell 3-month-old kitten.
When I bought her the woman at the cattery told me that all tortoise shell cats are female. Is this true?
Also she said something about them having an extra claw. Is this true as well?
Thanks in advance.
Not all tortoise shells are females, just most of them…
http://www.vin.com/PetCare/Articles/PetConnection/PCF00795.htm
So not all tortoise shells are female after all.
After reading the passage I found out I actually had a calico cat and not a tortoise shell, though I think in the UK they are both just grouped into tortoise shell.
Any idea about the extra claw?
The extra toe is probably a mutation related to the tortoise shell fur. We had a calico cat that gave birth to five kittens, one normal, three with six toes, and one with seven.
BTW, such cats are called polydactyl, and it only happens on the front paws.
Our Tortoise shell manx is a female, but has a normal number of toes.
To find out if your cat has an extra claw, look for it, but it might be halfway up its leg near the joint, since the foreleg of a cat or dog, etc. is actually a hand and they have no forearms or forelegs, somebody told me. This was caused by evolution in which our own forearm for instance evolved from a claw. 2 Also, there is a small black cat next door that has a pleasing pattern of yellow sort-of-stripes and spots? that are hard to describe on it. It hasn’t got any orange color or creme color or anything else like tan or gray or taupe. Now is this a calico cat or a tortoise shell cat? He or she is friendly and loves to roll around in dirt, esp when you pet it. It loves to watch for any mice or other animals and run after them. Another of their cats, namely Blackie, is completely black and can run halfway up a tall tree after a bird. Blackie is extremely friendly and when he sees you from a distance runs right over and sometimes then acts coy but usually doesn’t. He loves to be petted and praised and if he sees a jar or empty box, he will climb in head first and turn around and drape a paw over the edge and wait for the shouts of admiration. This is the kind of cat I would like if I ever bought a cat, but most of them are unfriendly and hide in corners and behind things, which I find most discouraging and would be unable to keep such a one. So should I get a kitten and have it trained to be friendly or what?
3
My tortoise shell cat is female, and has no extra toes.
However, in a related vein: I adopted her from a great lady who rescues cats and finds them good homes. Recently, I was talking to her about how my cat is very active, and can be aloof or ultra-friendly, depending on her mood. She remarked, “Oh, she’s a tortie.” Is that anecdotal, or does anyone know of any gene that would determine the personality of a cat, in relation to their fur color? To me, it seems like saying, “I can’t dance because I’m white,” or “She’s Asian, she must be good at Math.” (i.e. exterior skin color rarely determines personality/talents, it’s much more a product of the environment someone was raised in.)
I have two torties and neither has an extra toe. Both are female. My vet told me also that the vast majority of torties are female, and that male torties and calicos are worth money because of their rarity. I think I read that males are usual infertile.
Regarding Phoebestar’s remarks: both of my cats are very active for being nearly five years old. One is rather aloof and more typically cat-like, but my vet said it’s because she’s a long-haired cat. The other is so unbelievably friendly to the point of seeming like a dog. She follows me around, talks constantly, sleeps with us, plays all the time, and is on the bottom end of the sleep level for a cat. She also will put up with just about anything. You can push her over and rub her belly and she’ll just purr. A lot of times, she acts like an American Ragdoll.
Also most ginger cats are Toms. We have a tortie and she has mood swings. Her favourite trick is to rub noses with me in a most friendly way and then try to bite my nose.
Extra toes are genetic mutations but they aren’t linked to coat color, nor are they restricted to the front feet. A former boyfriend owned a polydactyl cat who was a grey tabby and had one extra toe on every foot, arranged just like the fingers on your hand–his front feet acted almost like baseball mitts. He was generally a pretty mellow cat. I don’t think skittishness or friendliness has much of a genetic link either–my experience has been that it has more to do with how much they were handled when teeny kittens, how the people around them treated them, and how safe they feel in their environments.
There are no doubt cites out there, but lunch time is over and I have to get back to work.
Servant to a (among other 4 legged critters) tortie female. She was a dumpster diver before we took her in and she’s very much an attention whore. No mood swings, she’s always ready to receive her due adulation from the masses. Very vocal and some might say, demanding. I grew up with purebred siamese but I wouldn’t say that any breed of cat displays particular characteristics. Most of my cats were extremely friendly and affectionate. The one siamese we gave to a friend of mine turned out to be the most vicious people hater I’ve ever known and people would say, “oh but she’s a siamese…” Crap. That had nothing to do with it.
Also, orange tabbies are usually male-only one in four hundred is female-like my Buffy.
[[There are no doubt cites out there, but lunch time is over and I have to get back to work.]]
Yes, right here in our archives:
I have a tortie (the best ever tortie but that’s another story). female and no extra toes.
IIRC
the color is determined by 3 sep[erate genes (and this is my own interpertation)
1 the base color gene is on the sex gene. It can be black - orange or neutral (white). White is recessive, Bk and Or are codomonant.
so for Males (w/o mutation) you can only have black, white or orange. For females you can have all the male colors and calico and torties.
2 the white belly gene will give the cat a white belly and paws and sometimes parts of the face.
3 the pastel gene will make the orange color kind of tan and the black color gray.
The 3 are seperate - and have nothing to do directly w/ extra toes.
I have told mapwife, that torties are psychotic. Most cats are just neurotic, but torties seem to go over the edge. We have one that is 19 years old that will let me stroke her with my right hand but panics when I try to use my left.
I will never understand cats!!!
Don Willard,
Cats and dogs do actually have forearms the same as most land mammals. They walk on their tip-toes, or to be more accurate the balls of their feet and ‘that part of the palm at the base of your fingers where the calluses form’. It’s the long bones of the hand/foot that appear to give them an extra joint in the appendages. I think under X-rays the bones and joints pretty much match ours (except for differently shaped of course and probly a few differences in the wrist). Cats and dogs have very long, thin hands & feet with little clusters of short stumpy “fingers” or digits on the ends. Our forearms evolving from a claw is new to me… I thought our claws ended up as fingernails:D.
Oh goodie! Questions I know the answer to - this will probably bore the heck out of everybody, but I don’t get a chance to show off very often!
Er . . . credentials first: have bred and exhibited pedigreed cats for years, been a member of the genepoole list (feline genetics) for most of those years, and my primary reference work is Robinson’s Genetics for Cat Breeders and Veterinarians, 4th edition, authors Carolyn M. Vella, Lorraine M. Shelton, John J. McGonagle, and Terry W. Stanglein, published by Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999.
First of all, ‘tortoiseshell’ is generally the accepted name for cats with both orange and black hair; often shortened to ‘tortie’ for convenience’s sake. ‘Calico’ usually refers to a tortoiseshell cat that is at least 1/3 white; the addition of the white-spotting gene often results in the orange and black pigment being grouped together in large patches instead of being mixed together somewhat randomly over the body. Some cat registration associations use the term ‘calico’, while others prefer the more technically accurate ‘tortoiseshell and white’.
Now on to the exciting stuff: The basic coloration of domestic cats is due to a pigment called ‘eumelanin’, which is basically brown. The gene responsible for producing eumelanin has mutated twice, once to produce ‘chocolate’ and once to produce ‘cinnamon’. Various other modifying genes act on the production of eumelanin to create most of the different cat colors/patterns.
However, at some time in domestic cat history a gene appeared on the X chromosome that converts eumelanin to ‘phaeomelanin’ - orange. Since it appears only on the X chromosome, it is called a ‘sex-linked gene’ - if you’re behind on your biology, X is the ‘female’ chromosome. Females are XX, males are XY.
Since normal males have only one X chromosome, they can be only brown or orange, depending on whether or not their X chromosome has the orange gene. Females, however, may have one X chromosome with the orange gene, and one X chromosome without the orange gene. During early development each of a female’s cells inactivates one of the X chromosomes; this happens pretty much randomly, so that some cells will have an active X with the orange gene and produce phaeomelanin (orange) pigment, while others will have an active X without the orange gene and so produce ordinary eumelanin (brown) pigment. Hence, the tortoiseshell female with both orange and brown pigmentation.
Tortoiseshell males occur in about 1 out of every 3000 male births. Usually they are due to the male being an XXY - as in the females, one of the X chromosomes in each cell will be inactivated at random, resulting in the same tortoiseshell coloration. These males are always sterile.
However, fertile tortoiseshell males do occur even more rarely, sometimes in the case of a mosaic, and sometimes in the case of a chimera. In a mosaic, the tissues may be composed of various combinations of XX and XY cells, XX and XXY cells, XY and XXY, etc. If the tissues that constitute the testicles happen to consists of mostly XY cells the cat may be fully or partially fertile.
A chimera occurs when two already-fertilized eggs merge and combine into a single developing embryo with the normal number of chromosomes. Because the cells are normal XYs, these cats are often fertile. Solkatz Pretty Boy Floid is a recent example of a very, very rare chimera.
You can see pics of Floid here (scroll down to bottom of page)http://www.bryrhavenmainecoons.com/Males.html
Polydactylism - well, see Jill’s link - that’s the article that brought me to the board! I was very impressed by finding an accurate article instead of the usual misinformation that my first post here was a congratulations on it. Polydactyly is usually considered a fault, but one breed of cats - the Pixie Bob - accepts it for the show ring.
"Tortietude" is what cat fanciers’ call it - there is no, as yet, known scientific basis for it, but most people who have tortoiseshells/calicos swear that they are a little ‘strange’. I have several right now, but since all of my cats are strange, I really couldn’t say if they are any stranger!
Most orange cats are male: er, no. This is actually an old wives tale that gained credence because it seemed to fit in with the female-tortoiseshell thing. If you breed a brown male and an orange female, all of the male kittens will be orange because the X chromosome inherited from the dam determines the color. Breed a tortoiseshell female to either an orange or brown male and about half of the male kittens will be orange. This is probably what started this belief; but if you breed two orange cats together, ALL of the kittens will be orange, male or female.
My little cat is mad as a hatter.
She can be really affectionate one minute then the next she’s ripping into me or running around with her tail puffed up and hissing at me.
I think it’s just because she’s young. She bites a lot but that’s maybe because she’s teething. I hope she grows out of it.
I checked last night and she does have an extra digit on each front foot though they’re not very visible at the moment.
Wonderful information, but Blackie the cat next door is a male and is all black except for the usual thin white stripe down the chest that black dogs and cats always have. You were saying that male cats have to be either brown or orange. Also, Blackie who is very friendly drools and rumbles andpurrs. What does this mean?
I didn’t beleive this so I worked out all the combos and this is what I found out using:
besides the genetic rarety you have 3 ‘base’ colors for a male cat orange, black, white (B-, O-, w-) and . In a female you have the addition of tortie (and calico) (BB, BO, Bw, OO, Ow, ww). the results are you would have a distrubution of 12 orange males, 12 black males and 12 white when all possible combonations are tried. For females you have 12 orange, 8 torties, 12 blacks and 4 whites. So the tortie takes away from the whites not he orange or you have the same change on an oragne female then a male given equal distrubution of genes.