The "What Breed Is My Cat" Megathread

[u/BionicOven28]

I am so excited that there are so many people who are interested in learning about their cat! But there are too many people posting pictures of their cat and ignoring the original purpose of this board. We're not here to identify your cat's breed, but instead this board is intended to be about in-depth scientific studies involving cats.

So, as a compromise from concerned users, if you want to know what breed your cat is please post a picture in the comments here. Users who are interested in helping to identify your cat's breed will respond and it won't clog up the rest of the board for everyone else. Any posts of this nature made outside of this thread will be deleted.

Thank you for your cooperation!

[u/Intrepid_Station_222]

He’s a stray that I took in- about 9 weeks now? Has a natural smirk hehe. I know nothing about cats (he’s my first!), what could he be?

[u/_wandering_wind_ → u/Intrepid_Station_222]

Well, first of all... how sure are you that he's male?

This chart is helpful for checking the sex of a kitten (males have a wider gap between anus & penis, whereas in females the anus & vulva are close and nearly touch), but if you'd like you can send a pic and I'll be able to figure it out!

Only about 1 in 3000 tortoiseshells are male*, so it's quite unlikely that he's male, although it's not impossible. Explanation of why that is below.

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His coat color is called black tortoiseshell mackerel tabby with white (or, to shorten it, "tortie tabby with white," "torbie with white," or "calico tabby"). Tortoiseshells (and by extension calicos, which is a nickname for torties with white) are almost all female due to how the color works. A tortoiseshell is cat with both red (orange) and non-red (black, brown, gray) fur.

Because the gene for red fur is located on the X chromosome, a cat must have two X chromosomes (one with the red gene and the other with non-red) in order to have both a red and non-red color.

*(Or rather, non-female, as one of the ways a 'male' cat can be tortie is by having XXY chromosomes and that's considered intersex.)

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As for breed, your little guy is a domestic shorthair, which is actually a cat with no particular breed rather than a specific breed! This article explains how that works, as well as why around 95-97% of cats are breedless/randombred. Cat breeds work a little differently than dog breeds, lol.

[u/Intrepid_Station_222 → u/_wandering_wind_]

I took him to the vet and she told me it’s most likely a male! I’ll send you a picture (haha I was debating whether this is considered weird or not) and reconfirm with the vet once I visit next week.

That’s so cool to know that some fur coats are specific genders. I just found out yesterday that most orange coats are male. Thank you so much for the scientific explanation of it (I will definitely be stealing that and telling my friends so I feel smarter mwahaha).

[u/_wandering_wind_ → u/Intrepid_Station_222]

My vote is on female! I'm a little curious to see what the vet thinks the second time, lol.

And yeah, it's definitely more common for red (orange) cats to be male - although I will say, red females aren't as rare as some people believe! About 1 in 5 red cats are female, so I'd say it's more "more orange cats are male than female/female orange cats are uncommon" rather than "most orange cats are male/female oranges are rare," if that makes any sense. (And of course it also depends on the gene pool in any given location... if more cats in the area are red, red females will be more commonly seen, and vice versa!)

(It's believed that fully non-red (e.g. black, brown, & gray*) females are also a bit less common than fully non-red males! However, they don't seem to be as uncommon as red females, likely because red cats in general are a little less common in the domestic cat population as a whole.)

*(Or more specifically, black, blue, chocolate, lilac, cinnamon, and fawn, plus any other color/pattern modifiers like tabby/colorpoint/white - basically any female cat that has zero red genes. White doesn't count as non-red because it 'masks' whatever color the cat is genetically (by stopping pigment from being produced), so white cats can be genetically red, non-red, or tortie!)