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I've heard people saying that when a cat's coat has 3 colors its a female is that true?
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Is It True?
- Thread starter YuselinM
- Start Date
Usually. It depends what is meant by "3 colors". If the cat just has a lot of different shades of color, that may not be an actual tortie. And torties don't need to have 3 colors; they can just be black and red.
The color gene for cats is on the X chromosome (white is different, not a true color). Males only have one X chromosome (unless he has a chromosomal defect like XXY or some other anomaly), and females have two. So females can have 2 different colors but males can only have 1.
So if a cat has black, true red, and white, that cat is almost certainly a female (about 1 in 3000 chance it's male). But some brown tabbies have a very warm shade of brown that looks red, so it can be a little hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Are you asking about a specific cat? If so, post a pic and we'll see what we can figure out!
The color gene for cats is on the X chromosome (white is different, not a true color). Males only have one X chromosome (unless he has a chromosomal defect like XXY or some other anomaly), and females have two. So females can have 2 different colors but males can only have 1.
So if a cat has black, true red, and white, that cat is almost certainly a female (about 1 in 3000 chance it's male). But some brown tabbies have a very warm shade of brown that looks red, so it can be a little hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Are you asking about a specific cat? If so, post a pic and we'll see what we can figure out!
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Cats with red and black coloring (or the dilute version, cream and blue), with or without white patches, are almost always female. In order for a cat to have both red and black (tortie, dilute tortie, tortie and white, or calico cats), they need have both the O (coding for orange) and o (coding for not orange) alleles. O and o sit on the X-chromosome. Therefore, for a cat to be Oo, they need to have two X-chromosomes. In order for a male cat to be a calico or a tortie, they would need to inherit XXY, the equivalent of in Klinefelter’s syndrome in humans. Only 1/3000 calico and tortie cats are male, and they are typically sterile.
