Cats with this coloring can be laid back and affectionate, but can also have a bit of a temper. Orange cats are usually males (only one out of five orange cats is female). Ginger, Orange and Red Cats Image credit: Pixabay They are said to be good hunters, but they can have a tendency to roam. The patterns and shades available seem to cover the entire rainbow, so it’s crazy to think that all cat colors basically boil down to one of two colors! A few tweaks and genetic “filters” is all it takes to produce the breathtaking variety we see.Black cats can be stubborn and friendly at the same time. Remember: every cat is an individual!Ĭat coat colors are as individual and distinctive as the personalities of our kitties. Cat breeds can influence personality (most people will agree that Siamese cats are chatty and Maine Coons are chill), but coat color alone won’t tell you if your new kitten will grow up to be frisky or calm, curious or cautious, a cuddle bug or a cool observer. The truth is that cat coat color has not been linked to personality. For example, since tortoiseshells are female and orange cats are mostly male, we may expect females to be sassy and males to be dumb! However, these stereotypes may just be human projections. There are many anecdotes and stereotypes about how a cat’s color relates to their personality, such as the perception that orange cats are lovable dopes (see: “all orange cats share one brain cell ”) or that tortoiseshells are feisty (see: “tortitude”). This gene is so sensitive to temperature that if kittens who have it are raised in a hot environment for those few weeks, they don’t develop any color and essentially become albinos! Does Coat Color Affect Personality? That’s why only the cat’s extremities develop any color: because those are the coolest parts of the body! (This gene is also why cats with the point pattern will usually have blue eyes).Ĭats with the point pattern are born white and develop their color over a few weeks. That means warm areas of the cat’s body are unable to produce pigment. The white sections of a point pattern don’t come from the usual masking gene instead, this is technically a type of albinism!įor cats with this pattern, their gene that controls production of pigment is temperature-sensitive. Even if the instructions say to paint it blue or red or green, if you don’t own any paint, it doesn’t matter what color the painting is “supposed” to be!Ĭats with albinism may have slightly more health difficulties and are very sensitive to sunlight, but they are otherwise normal cats and still make great pets. One way to understand it is to think of a “paint-by-numbers” set. That means an albino cat may have inherited the genes to be orange or black or any pattern, but because of their cells’ inability to produce pigment, those genes don’t matter. So what’s the difference between an all-white cat and an albino?Ī true albino cat has a disorder which makes its body unable to produce any pigment - regardless of which color genes it has. There’s a common misconception that all-white animals must be albino, but in fact they usually aren’t. So that means all calicos are tortoiseshells, but not all tortoiseshells are calico! Snowball Cats: Albino vs White A tortoiseshell is any cat with both orange and black, while a calico must have orange, black, and white. It’s easy to get confused between the terms tortoiseshell and calico.
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