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What percentage of orange tabby cats are female?

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Ace a red tabby Maine Coon

Ace a red tabby Maine Coon. Photo copyright Helmi Flick

About 25% of orange tabby cats are females. Tabby cats are today’s topic so I thought I’d try and answer the question in the title to this post. Most orange tabbies are males and they tend to have a nice character. The rarer orange female tabbies tend to be “sassy” but that is anecdotal.

The reason why most orange tabby cats are male is because the gene responsible for the orange colour is sex-linked. The gene is carried on one of the sex chromosomes, the X chromosome. The recognised symbol for this gene is O.  The O gene eliminates all eumelanistic pigment, which is black, chocolate, blue – variations of black) from the hairs. Also, the O gene masks the non-agouti gene, which in simple language means ginger cats are tabby cats.

Robinson’s Genetics, the definitive book on cat genetics (and a horrible book to be honest), does not tell us in plain language what percentage of orange tabby cats are female neither does The Cat, Its Behavior, Nutrition & Health, a good reference book. The same goes for Legacy of the Cat and Home Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook.

So, trawling the internet I have these figures:

  • 25%1
  • 25%2

I cannot find anything more definitive or certain. The general rule is that you are much more likely to see a male orange tabby cat than a female. As for calico cats (red, black and white) males are extremely rare.

Refs:

  1. Yahoo Answers
  2. Catster

Comments

What percentage of orange tabby cats are female? — 72 Comments

    • Thanks for visiting and asking Kristal.

      George has the appearance of a young Persian cat. He might be a Persian or a random bred cat who looks like a Persian. You’d probably know if he was a purebred Persian because there would be a pedigree (records). He is not Himalayan because they are pointed cats and George is not pointed.

      Hope this helps a bit.

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      • Thank you for your input. Here is a pic of him as he is today. I know the mother is Himalayan but never sen his father was told the father was Persian the owners said he looks like the father.

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        • Well there is the answer. There is a pedigree there: the parents are Persians. Remember the Himalayan is a Persian cat. It is just that the coat is pointed like a Siamese. The next question is whether the pedigree is good enough to describe George as purebred by American cat association standards.

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  4. This is Goldilocks female Maine coon she loves to play fetch an lovess attention her best friends are 3 yr an 1 yr olds such a great cat.

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  5. He seems to be between Sandy and red, he is a very special cat, I couldn’t ask for better. Yes people think he is “too pretty” to be a boy. It was nice having to wait years for all the lovely colour to come out, just gets better every day.

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    • Well done and what a superb cat Sasha is. Definitely tabby in there as you say.

      His color is beautiful. He is special. I bet people remark on his handsomeness when they see him.

      Is he a flame pointed Birman?

      If you have more photos please email me if you have time:

      m [at] pictures-of-cats.org

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  11. Hi Michael. We would need someone a lot better than L Lyons to be able to throw some light on that matter. Anyway it seems like the Maine Coon is descended from European/British cats because genetically it groups with cats in that area. Turkish and Cyprus cats are in the Anatolian E Mediterranean group. That’s how it is possible to tell if the so-called Angoras and vans of the cat fancy really are from Turkey.

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  12. Hi Michael. Ref. Angel of the North. No Maine Coon in her. She is just the regular Turkish LH’d cat. There are many like her in these parts

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    • Thanks Harvey. I just wonder if the TA got to England as a long haired cat (hundreds of years ago) and then to America with the immigrants and then became the Maine Coon.

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  13. Hi Michael. We still need a new and trustworthy study on Turkish cats and their impostors. Cornell may eventually do such a study but I wouldn’t bet on it. Did you contact you friend who worked at the AM University in Texas? Leslie lyons’ 2012 Turkish Cat Study and others are full of flaws. As Sarah Hartwell pointed out they are Ameri-centric, and I can point out at least 2 additional seriously consequences. 1. The opportunity to prove that the Turkish Van and Angora are genetically the same or different. How can she even attempt this when she does not even attempt to get bona fide Van and Angora samples from Turkey? Instead she assumes that CFA and TICA registered cats are legitimate. examples. Without any shame at all she then publishes phylogenetic trees that show those cats have European and Siamese ancestry.
    2. Not identifying the legitimate Angora marker prevented her from locating the ancient ancestor of the modern Persian.
    I wonder where all these idiots come from who work as well-respected scientists. Well maybe it’s a matter of the one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind.

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    • Great expression – I think you must be right by the sound of it. It’s embarrassing that these well respected ‘cat officials’ are so far up their own a***s that they have missed the point completely.

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  14. Hi Ruth. Red, orange, and ginger all refer to the same tone of red, which may be referred-to as the base colour, i.e. the expression of the “O’ gene without any modifying influences. Close to this base colour are auburn and brown but I don’t know the explanation for them. Then there are dilutes of red the most common of which is cream which may be better described as beige. Despite the affirmations to the contrary by the cat fancy Turkish cats do have dilute tones of red and black such as lilac. lavender, and blue. This is just more proof that they have never seen real Turkish Angoras. This can all be complicated by the ticking agouti gene which turns a red cat into a golden cat by obscuring the tabby stripes and giving the coat a ticked or speckled appearance. The picture is of a new arrival called Pamuk. He is white and blue (dilute black).

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    • Harvey, as usual Pamuk is a beautiful cat. You are surrounded by beautiful felines. He has the Van coat, which blurs the boundary between Van and Angora for me. I am waiting for a definitive article on why the Angora and Van are the same cat.

      I’d like to look after him too. Classy cat.

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        • She looks like a Turkish Van semi-longhair. The coat is very Turkish Van and she looks very classy – purebred appearance.It is rare for me to say this but I’d be quite confident that she is a purebred Turkish Van. A beautiful cat. Thanks Ashley.

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  15. Hi Dan. Perhaps those sold red “females” you saw were simply males with the un-needed parts removed. Ginger females are rare because a black tortie female with a solid red male is required. the black totties are very rare. This can only occur in places where the “O” gene is very common like Cyprus. To get that combination and the long-haired gene together is even rarer, but you get that in Cyprus too. There are red Persians too, but that is because they are selectively bred for that and the required genes probably came from their distant ancestor the Turkish Sarman (blond) Angora. I have always wanted a Maine Coon but I overloaded with Turkish cats at the moment. Here is a Turkish Sarman female.

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    • Impressive cat. I would love to look after a cat like this. Isn’t there a hint of Maine Coon in this cat? The face looks very Maine Coon to me. I could be wrong. Perhaps it is just because the Maine Coon is quite a natural looking cat – not extreme.

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    • I agree with Michael. The face and a hint of a ruff remind me of my beloved Maine Coons. She has a very noble countenance about her. A lovely cat. Someday I want to travel and see the cats of the old world. I know of a woman from Taiwan that I used to follow that always searched for cats out and about on her business trips. She had a really cool shot of a cat in front of a McDonald’s in Russia!

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  16. Thanks for the compliments,”Matata” has been bred in my house and i was the veterinarian who severed the umbilical cords of all the 6 kittens delivered by his dam Matahari in 2009.He is very stocky and robust, a tough tomcat who could fight out any cat for “Territorial Rights” of his house!Sadly, he is a total failure as a “STUD CAT” for my intention was of breeding a indigenous “Persian cat” breed accustomed to humid Mumbai climate.At times he has severely mauled his dam Matahari and on one occasion i had to take her to the vet for medical treatment.He is an excellent pet and keeps the house active with his joker antics like the one in which he is photographed.

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  17. A candid photo of my 4 year old orange Traditional Persian cat “Matata”, a familiar cat on “P.O.C”. I clicked this photo early in the morning(Thursday 5-9-2013) with a flashlight.He sometimes jumps onto the basin eagarly awaiting his morning meal.He is the “Alarm Clock” of the house and wakes us up daily approx between 0500 to 0600 hrs, “Meooowing” loudly.He is almost dog-like in behaviour and the clown in the house.

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  18. It’s a very confusing colour of cats. Some people say orange, some say red, some say ginger.
    Are they three different colours?
    Does each colour have different coloured eyes to the others?
    I’ve never taken much notice of the colours of cats because to me they are all equally as beautiful, so it doesn’t matter really what colour they are.

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    • It is confusing. Red, yellow, orange and ginger all describe the same colour and they are always tabbies. As to eye colour – good question 😉 Not sure about the answer. My gut feeling is that it varies. When the coat has some white it may affect eye colour causing blue eyes (eyes that lack pigment). We discuss orange cats quite a lot and I have decided I like them! But as you say, all cats are equally beautiful.

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  21. Oops — Above is 10 year old Isold – Male Ginger and white.

    This is my all time favorite Ginger Maine Coon cat. He is British and was the RHC/RCKC Avatar for seven years. I LOVE this kitty.

    I call this King George. I have permission to use this picture.

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  22. Harvey, I wondered if most of the female gingers were solid red/orange/yellow. The only females I’ve known were strays and I they could of been fixed, but they seemed to all be female to me. I was quite young, so my thoughts may be a bit off.

    With that said, I haven’t met a ginger female tabby that I know of. I have not met that many I where I haven’t known the sex, but those I knew/know are male.

    Here is one of my long time favorite Maine Coons from Really HUGE Cats/ Really CUTE Kittens and Cubs —
    Copyright All rights reserved by astakatrin

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      • Are we including orange with white? Because I have seen alot of mixed orange and white females but I’ve never personally seen and entirely orange female.

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        • As usual this is a good question. I would say that we are including orange and white. The white is there because of the piebald gene but the reason for the orange coat is still the same one. As I see it, we have orange tabby modified by the piebald or white spotting gene. The former is superior to the other. What are your observations on the percentage of orange tabby cats that are female? I could well be wrong by the way and I can’t find an answer in research.

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            • Marc: Nesting the photos in replies, very clever!

              I thought that all gingers were open to discussion. I do see how it could of meant tabbies only. The white takes the whole chromosome issue out of the equation. My bad.

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              • Not sure it is your ‘bad”. I am guessing that the percentage of female orange cats is the same for orange and white (bicolors) as it is for orange. I think you’ll find that white accompanies orange a lot of the time often in small amounts.

                As I understand it all gingers are tabbies but sometimes the tabby pattern is hidden much like in the Abyssinian cat.

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              • She was Lilly’s best friend in Slovenia whereI used to live – she lives there with 3 other cats at my ex girlfriends place. Pepi lived there before he dissappeared. Lilly grew up there. Also there are a tabby boy and a calico girl and a faded/light calico. They have all been in pics by now except maybe the tabby boy except he did appear as a kitten in a couple pics on the calico page earlier.

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  23. Hi Michael. When I think about red tabby females I think about solid red tabbies with no white or just a small parch of white under the chin. Even in Cyprus these are a bit hard to find and a black tortie female with only a little red and no white is needed to produce these solid red females and I think it works only with a solid red male. But red females with red on top and white underneath and on the chest are quite common here. This is the precursor to the Van pattern. You never see a cat with the red underneath and white on top. The only time you see a cat with white on top is when the spotting gene has covered nearly all the pigmented parts and the cat will be Van patterned, often with scattered patches of colour. If you are referring to females with varying percentages of red on top and white underneath then the figure may be 25% but solid red females are a lot scarcer. I think it true to say that red cats in general are more common in Cyprus than even in Turkey and certainly more than in the rest of the world. This little colony in Turkmen St comprises 1 solid red LH female, 1 solid red LH male 1 red/white SH males, 2 SH red females, 2 SH solid red females and several LH black/white tuxedo and Van patterned males. Not all are in this photo.

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    • You never see a cat with the red underneath and white on top.

      Good observation. It does seem that red cats are more common in Cyprus, which makes me want to find out why. These are gorgeous bright red Cyprus cats. They look brighter. Perhaps it is the bright light.

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