All her kittens were adopted out before her, and she was laying in her pod looking sad and lonely. She let me pat her right away when the volunteer opened the door.She had a sign on her pod door saying she gets really stressed out by the noise and activity in the shelter. My home is quiet and peaceful so I brought her home and she let me give her some more pats when I let her out of the crate in the bath. Now she's hunkering down in a quiet dark corner getting her bearings. Her full name is Margarine.
Hold on. A female ginger?
That's incredibly rare. http://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwywdjjgvqqo.amp
Apparently it's roughly an 80% chance that a ginger is male, so not quite incredibly rare. Male calicos are, though!
Male calicos are in the "you really sure that's a male cat or a calico cat cause it's that rare better check again"...rareness
I've only seen two in my life.
When I was very young we had a female ginger and then a friend of mine had one when we were about 12 or so.
Whenever I see a ginger I just assume they are male.
It's the same with calico cats as well from what I understand, almost all are female.
Torties are almost always female, also. My family are big fans of Torties.
Yep, to get calico coloring, cats must have two X chromosomes, so they will be female. If a male calico is born, it will be XXY. So that's a rare mutation to encounter, and those cats are always sterile too, so they're not passing along their mutation to any kittens either.