🐾 Tortoiseshell Cats 🐾

Have you ever read or heard the sentence “all tortoiseshell cats are female”, right? But do you know why these cute cats with blended orange and black patches on their fur are 99% female?

The answer is: genetics.

You may remember from your Biology classes that female mammals have two chromosomes X (XX) and male mammals have one X and one Y (XY).

In cats, the X chromosome is responsible for the fur color, and each X carries up to 3 colors: black, orange and white. This is why a female cat (XX) can end up having either a solid color, or a combination of two or even three colors and male cats (XY) can only have either a solid color or a combination of two colors.

Cats with all three colors, black, orange and white, are commonly called “calico”, and their orange and black patches can be more blended or more difuse.

Of course there are exceptions, and we can find rare male tortoiseshells in nature (less than 1%). It happens due to a genetic anomaly, and the male cat is XXY. Unfortunately, due to this condition, they are sterile.

Regardless of the sex of the tortoiseshell cat, the assymetry of this mix of orange and black makes them one of the most beautiful and unique cats in the world. You may never find two equal torties!

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Sources: Wikipedia and my Biology teacher,
who taught me about cat colors when I was 13 years old.