Sister Cats

[LudwigPastorius]

Stella and Mosby in a rare moment of quiet in the kitchen. They are usually wrestling and chasing each other around the house for fun.

[mwmisses4289]

1. Oh what pretty tabby cats!

They are looking at the camera like they are planning their next zoomie session, and wondering how soon you will go away so they can get started, lol! 😺😼😻

[LudwigPastorius]

3. Yeah, "Oh hai. We are totally innocent of anything that might happen later."

[Skittles]

2. gorgeous!

[AZJonnie]

4. Fun fact ... tabby is not a breed as such, it is actually house cat's 'default' coat pattern.

I'm not saying YOU don't know this, I just know some people don't, s'why I mention it

IOW in the absence of more dominant genes that change their color and pattern, all cats are tabby cats. That's why there's so many, esp. among ferals. If humans suddenly decided not to keep and breed cats anymore, such that all there were were feral cats, that bred freely? Over not THAT long, there'd be almost nothing but tabby-patterned cats, and the remainder who weren't would be a solid color, mostly black.

Bonus fun fact: Other than in cases of very rare genetic abnormalities, male house cats cannot be both orange, and black. Only females can.

Hope you enjoyed Jonnies Random Cat Facts

[mwmisses4289]

5. 😺😸

[LudwigPastorius]

7. Thanks, AZJonnie.

I knew that almost all calicos were female, but I didn't know that a tabby coat is the cat "default".

Very interesting, but I'm sure it won't make my kittehs think that they are aren't any less singular royalty.

[AZJonnie]

8. No problem LP, and indeed I'm sure you're correct about the royalty factor :)

Calicos and Torties are both always female (except as I say in some cases of rare genetic abnormality, and when such males exist, they're sterile) exactly because males can't be both black and orange at the same time, which is a defining characteristic of both coat patterns.

Some more fun facts:
1) in all cases when a male has any orange in their coat ... they are always orange tabbies (though the tabby pattern can sometimes only reveal in certain light).
2) in all cases when the only color on a cat (M/F) is some shade of orange, it will also always be orange tabby.
3) roughly 80% of orange tabbies are male
4) whereas females, if they have any orange in their coat, are much more likely to be torty or calico than tabby pattern.

This all has to do with the fact that the large majority of the information that creates the color and pattern of a cat is encoded only on the X chromosome (tabby is on both though!). This means that female cats can have a greater variety of color mixes and patterns than males, because of course they have 2 X's that can essentially interact with one another, and males have only 1.

[debm55]

6. They are beautiful, LudwigPastorious. Thank you very much for posting.

[CountAllVotes]

9. They are a handsome pair!

They remind me so much of the pair of tabby cats I had, Andreas and Silver.

They were from the local shelter and were adopted as kittens in 2013.

Sadly, they are both gone now but they were so much fun to have around!

Thanks for sharing their picture!

& recommend!