My kitten is male. He is mostly white with grey and black spots. The grey and black portions are striped. Is he considered a calico/tortoiseshell? I've read that male calicos/torties are very rare and have genetic concerns. Is he not calico because he doesn't have orange? If he is, what health concerns do I need to be worried about?
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Calico Male
- Thread starter bnn002
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Nope, he isn't a calico or a tortie. Both have red in their patterns, with calicos having larger splotches of color, usually interrupted with white, and torties having red and black (or cream and blue if they're dilute) mottled together.
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I'd call him a brown tabby and white (in the harlequin pattern) Domestic Shorthair. If you post a picture of one of his brown areas, I can tell you what specific tabby pattern he has. He's very cute for certain.
He looks like a brown and white tabby. It's hard to tell from the pic though, he looks brown, black and white unless the color is not showing right.
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Nope not a calico, an adorable little kitten, but not a calico. You need the orange to be calico, which is white, orange, and black. To make a calico (or torti) the cat needs the gene for orange and the gene for black, both are on X chromosomes so you need XX which would normally give you a female. To get a male one he would have XXY chromosomes which can cause issues like under development of muscles and reproductive organs.
What you have there is just a harlequin patterned tabby and white.
What you have there is just a harlequin patterned tabby and white.
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You can occasionally have male calicos, (about 1/3000 calicos and torties are males), but your adorable kitten isn't one because he doesn't have any red (no expression of the O allele, to be technical). He looks like his tabby patches are classic in pattern, so you could call him a brown classic tabby and white (in the harlequin pattern) Domestic Shorthair.
