4 kittens- all different colors! Please help identify

newtocatlife

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I'm a college student in Philadelphia. My roommates and I decided to bring in a stray that would hang out by our back door once we realized she was pregnant. Here is mama:


And here are the 4 kittens. These photos are all different ages





They all have similar faces except the gray one. She has very large "sad" eyes


Thanks for the help!
 
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newtocatlife

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Also, the calico and gray (diluted calico tabby?) are girls, tan and orange are boys.

The gray kitten has tan patches and faint tabby stripes throughout her body

Black calico has mottled tortoise shell like fur on her trunk but orange striped legs:

 
 

StefanZ

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As you see, they all have essentielly the same colors, ie black, red, and white.   Two are less black respective red, the grey ="blue", and the cremé.

Blue and creme are dilutions of black and red,  so they do have the gene too, although they do also have a dilutor gene.

They seem also to be tabby - so these multicolored torties and tabby will be called for torbie.

Hope it helped some.

Tx for helping the ma and her lovely children!

Good luck!

Ps.  The dilutor gene comes prob from mom - I think  her reddish is  diluted red = cremé.

Ps2.  I think it was enough with one daddy here, if that daddy had the right colors.   Although Im no expert on hereditary of cat colors, so I wont swear on it.

@newtocatlife  
 
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sofea

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Wow they are all very different, I know that a litter of kittens can have up to 3 dads, so they could be a mix of whatever mum is mixed in with whatever each dad was or was a mixture of, but your mum does look like a standard tabby domestic, but there must have definitely been a calico cat as one of the fathers to this litter because it would have given the gene to have the separate tri coulours, and judging by the black, the calico would have been a very dark or black, or there may have been a black father aswell, judging by the re instatement of the stripes, there would have to have been another ginger or lighter tabby with clear stripes to make the little kitten! I dno if this helps at all, apart from standard domestic, calico and possibly abbistinian in the mother they seem like a big gorjus mix of everything cute!, my cat just had birth to 7 kittens, she is black and some kittens are black, one is black with white tuxedo, one is calico but spotty, two are really fluffy, some are sleek, some are chubby and fluffy and have grey tummys and black socks, all one big mix like yours
 
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newtocatlife

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Thanks for all the input! The only cat we saw hanging around that we believed to be the father was a black and grey tabby with big round eyes and a smushed face.
 

Willowy

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Red mama cats can only have red males and red or calico/tortie females :D. Males get their color from their mom, females get one color from each parent. So to make calicos/torties, the father had to be dark---so the black and gray tabby you saw was probably the daddy. The mama cat is dilute so that's why 2 of the kittens are also dilute, I'm not sure exactly how the dilute gene works but most likely the daddy wasn't dilute.
 

conikat

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They are all beautiful and a colorful mix. Are any of these the one you were trying to name?
The pale gray with the " sad" eyes perhaps? A lovely kitten for certain.
My mom cat had 6 kittens with her first and only litter, and they were all a mad variety of colors and fur lengths. I think every Tom in the area must have gotten to her before we even knew she was ready! She wasn't even a year old at the time! But such a great little mom. I had to help with the first one because she wasn't getting the membrane off his face fast enough. But since he came out tail first ( and was huge), I called him Bass for bass-awards, lol. He turned into a beautiful tabby main coon. She was obviously very busy during that time. She herself appeared to be a full Russian Blue. I wanted to keep them all... But we ended up with Bass because he was her favorite as well as ours.
 

conikat

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Supposed to be Bass awkwards... I really hate auto correct!!!!
 
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