Motivation: I have a calico cat and while outside with my husband, he called her "Buddy" and he said he keeps thinking she's a boy. So I informed him about the fact that calico cats are mostly girls and males are rare and worth money. He had no idea and I thought, "I should really look this up to make sure I actually know what I'm talking about.
Answer:
I decided this might be a good job for wikipedia if I just search for "calico cat."
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| This is my own Calico Kitty (or as we call her, "Cali.") |
In case you don't know what a calico cat is, lemme give you an example. Calico cats are domestic cats with a spotted or parti-colored coat that is predominantly white, with patches of two other colors (often the two other colors are orange tabby and black). Outside of North America the pattern is more usually called tortoiseshell-and-white.
I can't rightly recollect when I first heard this little known fact. I think my mom told me when we were younger because we may have had a male cat... but I was young and I'm pretty sure my mom didn't know how to accurately determine the gender of kittens and unfortunately the poor kitten got murdered by a wild animal... so it is going to be one of those unsolved mysteries in my life.
Back to the question!
Because genetic determination of some coat colors in cats is linked to the X chromosome, calicoes are nearly always female. Because of the genetics involved, calico males generally have impaired vitality and are almost always sterile. I was reading this to my husband and he said, "what is impaired vitality?" I didn't know, so here's what I found out that means: "vitality" is exuberant physical strength or mental vigor. And "impaired" means weakened, diminished, or damaged. Diminished mental vigor? Yep, sounds like a guy to me! HA!!
Rumination: My mom was right! And I remembered something I learned as a youngster and passed it on. Although calico cats come in crazy different patterns, the most unique thing about them seems to be they are genetic freaks.
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