Is My Cat A Calico?

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rascalbrooke

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I’ve had him for a long time and always thought the small black dot on his face was just a cute feature, but I recently remembered his mother and all his siblings were calicos. But he’s obviously male.. so I’m not sure if the one dot is enough. Caliby? Or just orange and white tabby.
 

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abyeb

abyeb

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FelisCatus said:
Calicos are almost always female as well.
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Yes, because for a cat to be a calico, they need to express both O (coding for orange) and o (coding for not orange). Both of those alleles are carried on the X-chromosome. So, the only way a male cat can be a calico (or a tortie), is to inherit XXY, the equivalent of kleinefelter syndrome in humans. This is a 1/3000 occurance in cats.
 
lutece

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Calico coloring on a male cat can be due to an extra X chromosome (Klinefelter syndrome), or it could be a chimera (two zygotes merging in early fetal development)... however, either of those possibilities would be more likely to have colors randomly distributed all over the cat, like a female calico. With a single black spot like that, my guess is that there was a random event or mutation affecting a single cell during fetal development, and that cell divided to become the black area on his cheek. Odd things do happen :)
 
Apolley729

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I have a male striped black/ solid white patchy cat, he has like touches of cinnamon all over him, on his legs, on his sides, on his ears and on his mouth. It's like little cinnamon kisses, but not a distinctive patch. I wondered, is he just a standard tabby? Or, is he considered calico? It's super subtle so I figured, probably not.
 

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lutece

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Post some more pictures of the rest of him, and we can try to figure out what color he is.
 
lutece

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Apolley729 Apolley729 , I would describe your cat as a brown mackerel tabby and white domestic shorthair. Brown tabby cats have black stripes on a brownish background, but the background color can have many normal variations, from a light or grayish tan, to a very warm reddish brown. I think the warm, "cinnamon" areas that you are seeing are probably a normal part of the brown tabby background color.

I notice that your cat's mackerel stripes are quite thin and close together, so he might be heterozygous for ticked tabby. Heterozygous ticked/mackerel tabbies can sometimes have very thin "pencil stripes." He's cute!
 
Apolley729

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lutece said:
Apolley729 Apolley729 , I would describe your cat as a brown mackerel tabby and white domestic shorthair. Brown tabby cats have black stripes on a brownish background, but the background color can have many normal variations, from a light or grayish tan, to a very warm reddish brown. I think the warm, "cinnamon" areas that you are seeing are probably a normal part of the brown tabby background color.

I notice that your cat's mackerel stripes are quite thin and close together, so he might be heterozygous for ticked tabby. Heterozygous ticked/mackerel tabbies can sometimes have very thin "pencil stripes." He's cute!
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That's awesome! Thank you so much for the info! Heres more cute kitties lol :D
 

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