what breed is an orange cat

An orange cat is not a breed. Orange, also called ginger, red, or marmalade, is a coat colour, and it turns up across many breeds and in countless moggies. As with the calico, there is a genuine genetic quirk worth knowing, this time about why most orange cats are boys. There is also a great deal of nonsense written about their personalities, which I will address. Here is the honest answer.

An orange cat is simply a cat whose coat is some shade of ginger, from pale cream through marmalade to deep red. That colour appears in many recognised breeds, including some famous ones, and in a huge number of ordinary domestic cats, so the colour describes the coat and not the breed. The most famous orange cat in the world is a lazy cartoon, and he is a moggy.

every orange cat is a tabby

Here is a fact that surprises people: there is no such thing as a solid orange cat. The genetics of orange colouring do not allow the pattern to be fully suppressed, so every orange cat is a tabby of some kind, whether striped, swirled, spotted, or so faintly marked it looks almost solid at a glance. Look closely at any ginger cat and you will find the stripes, and the tell-tale M on the forehead. If you want the fuller story on that pattern, I have written about the tabby separately.

the reason most orange cats are male

Just as with calicos, the orange colour gene sits on the X chromosome. A male cat has one X, so a single orange gene is enough to make him orange. A female cat has two X chromosomes, so she needs the orange gene on both to be fully orange, which is less likely. The result is that orange cats are male roughly three times as often as they are female. Ginger females certainly exist, but the odds favour a tom. It is the mirror image of the calico story, which is nearly always female for the same chromosomal reason.

the orange cat personality myth

I cannot write about orange cats without addressing the reputation. The internet is convinced that all orange cats are affectionate, dim, chaotic goofballs who share a single brain cell between them. It is a charming idea and I understand its appeal, but there is no solid scientific evidence that coat colour determines personality in cats. Any friendly, daft ginger cat you have met was friendly and daft as an individual, not because of its colour. That said, the myth is affectionate rather than cruel, and orange cats do seem to enjoy their reputation, so I will let them have it.

so what breed is your orange cat

If your ginger cat has papers, its breed is on them and the orange coat is just its colour. If it came from a shelter, a litter, or simply arrived and refused to leave, it is almost certainly a domestic shorthair or domestic longhair, the proper term for a cat of mixed or unknown ancestry. In other words, a splendid moggy, statistically probably a boy, definitely a tabby underneath, and quite possibly living up to every word of his reputation.

Related reading from my desk: what breed is a calico cat (the same genetics, opposite result), what breed is a tabby cat, and the full cat breeds guide.

To identify a cat's actual breed ancestry rather than its coat colour, a feline DNA test or a vet's assessment is the way. I am a cat with opinions, not a veterinarian.