female orange cats

A couple of months ago, I took Holly Golightly, my orange tabby cat, to the vet for a check-up after I found her on the street. The vet seemed very surprised to meet an all orange female cat. She stated that they are very rare. It is more common to see a calico.

Anyone hear about this? I found some stuff on the internet about this. Any other owners of an all orange female cat?


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I had heard years ago that orange tabbies were 85% male. But since being on the forums there seems to be a fair mix of male & female orange tabbies.

They are fewer orange females than males, but I wouldn't say they were rare. I know of several. I think it depends on local gene pools a lot - if there are lots of orange cats in feral populations you're going to end up with lots of orange kittens. Orange females need to get the orange gene from both parents whereas males only need it from one parent.

My oldest cat is an orange tabby(red tabby) and she if female.

Cairo is an orange female. She came from a litter of 6 and was the only female. All the others were orange too.

They are not common. But they are not rare either. The color gene is on the X chromosone. So the mother would have to carry the red (orange) gene and so would the father to produce a red female.

You can get it by breeding a red female to a red male or a tortie/calico female to a red male.

If the father is black or non-red, and the mother is tortie/calico; then any red kittens will be males and not females.

Sneaky Pie's mom was an orange tabby. I know this b/c we got her from my inlaws. Sneaky Pie's a Tortishell Tabby, so I don't know what color her dad was.

And she's got Torbitude

If she's a tortie, then dad was brown tabby or a black - cause she would have a color gene from both parents

Tabitha is a red and white Tabby. I had a female foster kitten this year that was a red Tabby as well.

It run down, as told to me by my first Vet, is as follows:

70% male
30% female

JoJo is an orange female. All Catitude, too.

As for 'rarity' they're Uncommon, not necessarily Rare. Now, male calicos/torties are RARE. They account for about 1-2% of the calicos/torties born.

A.

If I had a larger house, more $$ and a wife that loved having more than 2 cats. I would find an orange female to breed with Ryu. Orange, red, ginger cats are soooo cute.

We've had only one. Her name was Jade. Beautiful red tabby markings.

We have several orange female cats at the rescue.

I don't see them as often as males.. but I definitely don't think that they are rare.

I love her name!

My Sapphire is an all orange female

Ryu is not neutered ??????? Shame on you!

Yes, female orange cats are less common than males, but the shelter here seems to have a lot of them. Enough that they do not get adopted for being "unique".

There are catteries that specialises in Red Persians (solids or tabbies) - here's one of them:

http://www.ltch-cattery.com/

Thanks everyone for explaining the genetics of orange cats. I was just really surprised about the vet's reaction.

Thank you for the compliment regarding Holly's name, Jaffacake! I wanted to name her after the cat in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" because I love Audrey Hepburn so much. However, the orange cat's name in the movie is "Cat". I couldn't bear to call her Cat, so I chose the next best thing!