Our new kitten

[NinaHeart]

I've uploaded a picture of our new kitten, Sherlock, for your delight! (hope it works, it's the first time I've tried) We should get him in the middle of June. He's one of my DSD's cat's offspring and we let her choose for us. She say's he's cuddly and funny.

Not working yet, Nina. It might be site lag - but have you checked that you've ticked Finish or whatever it is and made your pictures public?

Had a fiddle with it - try again? (sorry, bit of a bozo at this sort of thing!)

Yep - that's it !

What a handsome little chappie.

PS - but. Could you get your DSD to check his 'manliness' ? That's more of a female colouring and sometimes they can be quite hard to sex if you're not used to it.

Aw, what a cutie!

Cozie....I had exactly the sAMe thought. i thought torties were almost always girls - and I am not sure a rather shy 15 year old is best at cat-sexing!
I reckon Sherlock could be a girl's name....!

They almost always are. Not impossible, but........

Sherlock it is whatever, eh?

PS - is she having Mum neutered?

We don't mind which gender it is. I've had cats of both sorts and they've all been lovely.

She had two female cats who have both littered (is that a word?) at the same time and to the same tom, so I hope that the mums will be neutered immediately. I have mentioned it as strongly as I dare. H's ex-wife is a bit of a weedy-wet though so who knows. One of the reasons for taking one of these kittens is that we know we can give it a really good home, whereas the ex-w has had several pets which have died young/been returned/needed re-homing.

He/she is very pretty. If its a boy the accoutrements are pretty obvious.

Beautiful boy/girl.

Torties are always girls because the fur colour gene is on the X chromosome. What happens in females of any mammalian species is that when you're just a tiny ball of cells one of the X chromosomes in each cell gets bundled up into a teeny tiny thing called a Barr body which aren't transcribed. Every time the cell divides the same chromosome is made into a Barr body so you end up with patches of cells with each chromosome deactivated - this is why some female cats have a patchy coloured coat.

Usually obvious to thee and me fluffy. Maybe not to the OP's DSD ?

I have to say - that looks like a girl's head to me.

Oops. Got so carried away with the biology lesson that I forgot to say how massively cute he/she is.

I don't think it's absolutely an 'always' QS. Just a 'nearly always'.

Anyway - we don't need to give poor Sherlock an identity crisis before even leaving home.

I think that may well be a She-lock. How adorable.

My mum has a tortie- headstrong little cowbag sometimes, has chilled in middle age and will now let me stroke her. And yes, the nickname of naughty tortie applied to Moll. Very much so.

I think the chance of a male tortie is something silly like 1/40,000!
S/he is so lovely though - gorgeous little thing!

Well you could get a male tortie if it was XXY. You definitely need two X chromosomes for it though.

A vet told me it can happen but that they are usually born dead or die shortly after birth.

I'm guessing XXY isn't as well tolerated in cats as it is in humans then.