I completely missed that yesterday was international cat day! Of all people, I should probably know that, but oh well. I had, and still have, a lot on my mind. But, I did see something very rare yesterday. Our first appointment was a kitten visit, and one of them was a male tortie. I've seen articles about them and know they exist, but even with 11 years working in a cat hospital, have never seen one in person. 

The reason torties and calicos are "always" female is actually fairly straightforward: the genes for orange and black are located on the X chromosome. Cats have the same sex chromosomes as people: generally XX means female, and XY means male. Also like people, there can be exceptions. We know people can have the following combinations: XX, XY, XXY, XYY, XXX, X, XXXX, XXXY, XXYY. An X chromosome is necessary for a fetus to be viable, so just having a Y is not going to develop to the point of a live birth. Often a single X chromosome results in miscarriage, but if a live birth results there are noticeable disabilities (this is called Turner syndrome).Some of those cause no obvious symptoms, or the effects can be minimal...so this is probably more common than we think, since we don't do a full genetic sequence of every person born. One extra chromosome will usually have fewer effects than 2, or even 3. 

Anyway..back to cats. With orange and black being on the X chromosome, a cat needs more than 1 X to display both colors (it's an either/or situation on each chromosome). While female cats develop, the expression of color is "turned off" in one X chromosome in each cell, so if they carry orange and black genes, they can express both. Having white or not is controlled by a different gene, and technically that's what differentiates calicos vs torties. Usually people think calicos are blotches of solid colors (they can have patches of tabby patterned fur too, tabby is the same gene as black fur, but another gene determines solid vs tabby color), and torties are just orange/black randomly mixed, but that's not the case. My cat Alli, who I always called a dilute tortie (dilute=lightening of the solid or tabby colors, she was blue/gray and peach instead of black and orange, this is a separate gene too that any cat can have), was technically a calico. She had a couple small patches of white, but by the time I noticed they were white instead of peach, I was accustomed to calling her a tortie and just stuck with it. 

Thus kitten was neutered at a shelter, and the records said it was a routine neuter..we figured they had the color wrong, but this cat is externally male. Actually sequencing genetics in pets rarely happens, but most likely he's XXY-that's definitely the most common mutation that's compatible with his coloring, and he's about 4 .months and developing normally. Realistically, we'll never actually know for sure, but I think it's freaking cool to have seen one. It's *estimated* that one out of 3,000 tortie cats are male (with the amount of cats who are born outdoors and don't survive, there's a fairly big margin of error here). 

Here he is:

And now I need to stop nerding out and get my ass moving. I woke up too early, got some stuff done including a little cooking, but I need to go grocery shopping, finish cooking, and hopefully make lunches. Miki will need another walk too. Tomorrow I have the brewery thing that I'm still not looking forward to, but my car needs new spark plugs and something else. My dad told me his friend can work on it this Friday and I need to have $150 cash for the labor by then. Plus whatever the parts my dad ordered cost. He does not understand, even after I got a second job, that not everyone can come up with a couple hundred dollars at the drop of a hat...it's one thing to put it on a credit card, but I need to have cash for this. More than a week's notice would have been nice! I'd really be screwed if I was paid biweekly.