So I found this cat today...

This morning instead of getting the chance to sleep in late, as I was planning to do, I was informed by my husband we had a stray cat on our front porch. Now this is the same cat that many of my neighbors had expressed concerns over because it was so skinny and was always lurking around but couldn't be caught. Apparently it could be caught by my 10 year-old who managed to feed it and cage it in swift order. Of course it meant I had to do something with the much angry, and feral, beast. So off to the Oak Park Animal Care League, our local shelter which does the most humane work I have ever seen in an animal shelter, and I brought them a new resident. Not that they needed another cat! The interesting thing I learned from them today is that Calico Cats are pretty much always female. So I just had to know why.

The answer has to do with genetics. Every cat has 38 pairs of chromosomes; half of the pairs are from the mother, the other half is from the father. Within every chromosome there are thousands of different genes. Every female receives one X chromosome from her mother and one X chromosome from her father, while a male receives one X chromosome from his mother and one Y chromosome from his father. Within the X chromosome is a gene for coat color.In calicos and tortoiseshells, one X has the black gene; the other X has the orange gene. White coat color is associated with a completely separate gene. At conception, the kitten is a one-celled organism, which divides until there are millions of cells that make up the final kitten.

So there you go...