coloring

Hi, I have 4 kittens. Not much experience at all, I don't breed or anything like that. I don't know how to tell if they are male or female - they are only 1week old. My question is about the coloring, they are all orange and cream tabby with grey tails. Their mom is mostly grey with orange and white faintly splotched all over. I have read that orange cats are usually male. Does this mean that my kittens are all male? And , I'm under the impression that it might be rare for an orange tabby cat to have a grey tail. I know im probably wrong , i just started reading into cat genetics and I am very curious. I also would like to know because my friends that will be taking a kitten would like to know the sex. I'll try to post a picture but Im not really sure how this works.

http://i3.tinypic.com/vy4i36.jpg

Most of the time orange cats are all male but sometimes they can be female. A female has to inherity the orange X from both parents. I know of a couple all orange females. If there is brown splotches, as in calico or tortishell then they are almost certainly female. But a genetic anomoly can occur where a male is XXY and is possible to have a calico male if such occurs. This is much less common than an all orange female which can occur in the correct conditions.

If dad was an orange tabby then you could have orange males and females in this bunch. The best way to tell is by looking at pictures of the differences between male and female parts. You can tell as a kitten but sometimes it is difficult.

If the kittens all have orange, cream and grey tails (which properly should be called red, cream and blue) - you have bluecream tabbies or dilute calicos (with white)....and females.

While you can have a rarer bluecream male, the likely hood of that occuring is less then 1%.

The mother of your kittens is a dilute calico from your description.