Sister Cats

[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.