is it just me or do orange male tabbys seem to get bigger?

my cat is buff but i wonder if he has the orange gene in him? anyway hes a beast!

hes 15 pounds and hes got like no fat on him, ive never had such a monster cat b4

do u guys think the orange gene does this? I notice many orange cats are often supersized!

I have had 3 orange males, and 2 of them have been large. One was 22 lbs with a head as big as a softball. The other was about 17 lbs. My current orange guy is small, though, only about 6 lbs.

^Scooter? the one in your siggy? If so, he looks like a cute little thing.

I think it's just that a lot of orange cats are male, and male cats tend to get a little bigger.
My dad and his wife have a huge male tabby - definitely one of the largest cats I've seen, the other being a large long haired pointed male that a vet I went to had (called Fancy! ) That pointed male has dwarfed any cat I've seen before or since. Male orange cats always tend to fall into the middle range, and if neutered and well cared for - usually end up fat or near it.

Moose, who will be nine yrs. old in Feb., is 12 lbs, thin, very wiry and is "all legs".

My Ferris weighs about 14 pounds and is the biggest (tallest and heaviest) cat in my crew, and although he looks like a footstool when his fur is all grown in, when it gets shaved in the spring it turns out he's rail thin!

Yes, Scooter is only about 6 lbs, a tiny boy comparatively. He is very cute, though. I love red tabby boys, I wish I could have a houseful.

While the largest domestic cat I ever met was an orange/red tabby (Buck at 24lbs down from 36lbs) it really depends on the genetics inherited from the parents.

I have 7 red cats here and they range in size from 6.5 to 17 pounds. I agree, some can be very large, but having lived with a lot of red cats in my life, I'd have to say that they average about 12 pounds.

The largest cat I came across is a white cat. At 22 pounds, you can feel his ribs.

My orange/red males were always small.
Frisky was about 6 pounds and the father of my Meeko was 8 pounds.
Simba Meekos dad was my sisters cat.

I think you may have something there Kitty is my ginger boy and is a monster. He weighs a whole stone! 14lb!!! I have to admit he is a bit on the flabby side but even when I first got him, he was a skinny rake and was still really heavy. I think he`s like Eric Cartman. He`s not fat, he`s big boned!

Maisie on the other hand is a very dainty tortie. I wonder if most torties are like that?

Squirt's a big boy. Probably tips the scales at about 15 lbs at the moment. He went AWOL on us this summer and when he jumped ship he was 16 lbs. We got him back 3-1/2 months later and I figure he was 9 or 10 lbs. Since his return he's been eating almost constantly and is probably back up to 15 lbs. He's got a big frame (solid as a brick **** house) and with his winter coat on he looks huge!

My orange tabby male was 22 lbs at age 12.

My orange tabby just weighed in at 5# when I took him to the vet yesterday to be neutered. He's just 4 months old, and I suspect he's going to be a very big boy when he grows up. His two sisters are brown patched tabbies and both weigh 3.5#. His mother is also an orange tabby and is very slender at 6.7#. I don't know who the father was but it's likely a huge brown tabby I've seen around occasionally.

Zane is a gray tabby--that's how he got his name, Zane Grey; if he'd been a female he'd have been Lady Jane, after the Nine Day Queen--and the last time he was weighed was 18 lbs. His predicessor was an orange tabby named PurrPuss; I'm not sure how much PP weighed, but he was a big boy too. Before him was the DLH, Smog, who under his hair wasn't all that big.

Originally Posted by Jaffacake

Maisie on the other hand is a very dainty tortie. I wonder if most torties are like that?

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I think it still comes down to the parents. My parents have a tortie girl (Tiffany) who weighs in at 21lbs...she's almost 17 now but you should have seen her move to hunt when she was younger. I swear there wasn't a living field mouse anywhere on thier property. Her brother is a silver tabby and weighs in at 22lbs...

...of course the lady we got those two from was never sure that the dad was actually a domestic cat and not part bobcat since he was the size of a medium dog.

I have two red tabby boys, and they're both big -- not fat, just big all over. (Well, Oliver is a little chubby . . .) I used to think they had some Maine Coon in them, even though neither of them are long-haired.

working in the vet field i have come upon nothing but HUGE orange male cats. They always have heads the size of softballs and i just absolutely adore them too. I want an orange but working where i work, by far the orange male cats are the ones we see with urinary blockage. I'm afraid...lol i love big orange medium hair males they are just so gorgeous. Tortie females are usually the tiniest ones that we see. My herd that I have are all medium sized, between 10-12 lbs even though Worm is becoming a chunky monkey.

I think the premise of this thread is onto something, too. Rocket is a big-boned cat; even my vet exclaimed at his build. He's still just 13 pounds; a light-weight compared to some of the other cats described here. And every ounce is muscle and bone. There's no flab. But he always has a ravenous appetite and if I don't restrict him, he'd be a lot heavier. And at four years old, I'm not entirely sure he isn't even done growing bigger yet.

But if the orange tabbies have a hugeness gene, it must be recessive, because Twinkie is orange and white (see sig) and he's just a little twerp. He's only a little over nine pounds, and small-framed, too.

Coaster, that picture looks like PurrPuss, except PP was bigger and didn't have quite as much white.

I taught him to sit on people's shoulders when he was a kitten; Mother didn't thank me for it as he would get on her shoulder and then launch himself off, digging in his back claws as he did so.