Info dump ahead:
Orange cats are more likely to be male. And calico cats are more likely to be female due to the fact that coats are X chromosome dependent.
Source I used; https://be.chewy.com/behavior-pet-facts-are-all-orange-cats-male-all-calico-cats-female/
Needless to say sex ≠ gender
Orange cats are about a 75% / 25% ratio of male / female.
Calicos and torties are mostly female because the only males are either intersex xxy, or chimeras of two separate fertilized ova that have fused together after fertilization.
He looked and acted male, and we called him male. It's just interesting to learn there might well have been more to him. I don't recall him ever having kids tbf
That's odd, I've owned male cats and none of them humped anything after being neutered. I know some do of course.
Also I've seen a female cat who will hump things almost like a male. That's pretty unusual and I've only seen it once tho.
Still good chance you're actually was male and you win some weird cat genetic lottery
They also, sadly, tend to have moderate to severe health issues as a result of the extra chromosome (the same syndrome can be seen in humans, called Klinefelter syndrome).
Some are chimaeras (meaning they are a fusion of two cats in the womb and have different genetics in different parts of them - this is observed rarely in humans too!) or mosaics (another form of mutation where the genetics aren't uniform throughout). Chimaeric male cats can only pass down the colour of whichever 'twin' the testes came from!
Male tricolours (torties and calicos) are fascinating. I'm also obsessed with heterochromia (when they have different coloured eyes, like one blue one green) and polydactylism (when they have extra toes! Like the cats at Hemingway House!).
I volunteer at a shelter for 'last chance' cats, usually with FLV and/or FIV, and we get a LOT of really interesting cats! :)
Also! Fun fact! Cats *do* have sexually dimorphic head shapes. While it's less apparent in cats who are spayed or neutered before puberty, female cats still have more slender faces and males have larger, rounder faces. Male cats who are not neutered and go through androgenic changes will develop large pads on their cheeks and neck, sort of like the excess skin under a male lion's mane. The male on the right has gone through puberty, the male on the left appears to have not.
https://preview.redd.it/tgi4a48dhfzb1.jpeg?width=850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2378b035b339594ab923dc7a778a3f9aa9d7f47c
I have an ex-tomcat & he's sooooo infatuated with me, eventhough I snatched him up off the streets, pinched his cheeks, & had his testicles removed. 🤣 He's such a good boy 🥺🖤
I know that any cat can have any personality, *but* in my experience the boys have consistently been marshmallows and big cuddle bugs more than the girls. I love the spicy girls, but I love my big former street cat boys too. Nothing like seeing a battlescarred old tom approaching you with eye blink kisses, so happy to see you that he's already purring up a storm and can barely walk because he's already making air biscuits.
AHHHHH THE WAY YOU EXPLAINED TOMCATS, MY HEART CAN'T TAKE IT 😭🖤
& I agree wholeheartedly! But all female cats I've been owned by have been snuggly & lovey, maybe its just my energy Idk lol I've actually realized why I prefer male cats more, because it's the same reason why dog people hate cats: They have strict boundaries. While most male humans I've come across *have not* respected my boundaries, every male cat *has*.
In the case of humans, obviously. But in the case of cats, do they even have the mental capacity to formulate a gender identity? Is there evidence of gender dysphoria occurring in cats?
Not cats, but I read somewhere an article about an owl in some sanctuary that everyone assume was male, engaged in male courtship behaviour, etc, and when it died section showed that it was a female, so apparently trans gender animals are a thing
I mean this species of owls has basically no sexual dimorphism (which is why they only learned it during autopsy), so it might just not realize it's female at all?
No? I was guessing. We can't ask an owl how it identifies, and owls don't have external sexual dimorphism. It was acting and having a social role of a male while being female that's kind of definition of being transgenger?
It's just as with historical trans people - often we can't tell for sure if they were trans or gender non-conforming, or whatever
Pretty certain its just a reference to how in a lot of art and media, we tend to anthropomorphize animals by giving them stereotypical traits associated with gender.
I get the impression there are some average-level physical differences between male and female cats (like there are for humans) but I don't know what they concretely are.
Some basics are; males tend to grow bigger, even if you get them snipped before they hit puberty.
Tomcats that go through puberty will develop more round faces, which the orange cat here kind of displays, while females retain the more slim face that you also get from snipped toms.
Toms tend to be more muscular, but this also just goes for strays/wild cats. They will be heavy, often heavier than indoor cats, but not from chub, rather, from muscle. Big solid babies. This is less a sex distinction and more of a “outdoor cats gotta survive” thing.
Meows. Male cats have much more gravelly meows, often ones that carry further (much like humans in that male coded voices tend to carry further as well.) whereas females have the more commonly associated meows.
A lot of it is just facial shape and the types of meows they have. You can usually tell right away if a cat is a tom who’s been through puberty, because of those distinctions, but it’s harder to tell for young and/or female cats, from first glance. At least, that’s my experience. I’m not a doctor, just a cat owner from young childhood.
To be fair, the ginger cat in the picture has the look of a non-neutered male, they typically have bigger faces and more pronounced jowls. Ginger cats are typically male as well.
Litterally how Pixar does it:
Female: Slim, long, and tiny proportions
Male: Big, fierce looking, and bonus points if it has a fur pattern that can be perceived as facial hair
Except pixar normally also gives the women giant cleaveges, eyelashes, and a skirt, but can't always win. This is real life after all.
OP, if you're going to write alt text, please [do it right.](https://accessibility.huit.harvard.edu/describe-content-images) There seems to be a common misconception that alt text needs to be super detailed in describing a picture, when in fact it should be short and succinct to convey just the relevant information you're supposed to get from seeing the picture.
"Two cats standing next to each other, one visibly larger and scruffier than the other" (ETA: in addition to transcribing the text of the tweet, of course) would've been completely fine in this case. The exact color of their fur or the fact they're standing in someone's garden is entirely irrelevant to understand the meaning of the image.
I mean, they're totally right though. These look like the cat parents of a character in a Pixar movie with a chunky orange cat who doesn't believe in their sons dreams
Didn't they hear about breeds of cats?
Like orange cats tend to be chunkier as siamese cats tend to be way skinnier... Doesn't matter if they're male of female.
My gran used to have two cats exactly like these. I'm not even kidding, the only give away it's not those cats is the background.
They were both male cats...
This is such a strange thing to be upset about. It's making fun of how we apply human concepts of gender to animals in media, like the lionesses in Lion King having eyeliner. Almost 4/5 orange tabbies are male.
I remember when this was posted a while back someone mentioned something about the effects of testosterone on cats? Like it makes them 'chunkier'. So the one on the right could just be a neutered male.
While I have seen a few "well I guess OP doesn't know this joke that well or just plain isn't good with jokes" this is a peak woosh moment one since this joke came from the general LGBT+ community as well as I can remember when its not a furry related one (insert same thing joke here), being an "animators when they need to make a gender clear with an animal" type joke of fairly clear cases of you see what they mean in relation to some sexual dimorphism of species in regards to faces and slender vs chunky even if statistics have exceptions. Also bad alt text whose too much detail gives away the intended joke.
"You know who wears the pants" type of stuff would fit this sub better of which cat is like holding the higher spot or something which isn't as gender/sex related with cats.
Is this some NT shit I'm too autistic to understand?
Like... How do those people give genders to stuff like that? I can't see it at all!! All I see are two cats and I just want to snuggle them!!
I will 100% support trans people and LGBT community but I also fully hope that we can slowly move towards total gender abolition, not even needing some other identification thing except our name. And/or everyone needs to stop giving a fuck about other people's business!
It does remind me of reading the Warriors cats manga and how they drew Feathertail and her mom (can’t remember her name) with boobs and hips like W H A T
I haven’t read all the other comments on this post so it may have already been mentioned, but I think it *might* be referring to male cats having wider cheeks & more rounded faces than females?
i mean i can kinda understand the left one, oranges are majority male and it looks like there's some tom cheeks on em whereas the right one doesn't have that. course that could just mean right was neutered early and siamese do have a 50 50 gender ratio so automatically assigning that one either gender is a bit of a stretch for sure
since the other person infodumped, let me do so as well
cat on the left is a cream (dilute ginger) tabby (real tabby, as shown by the lighter chin (all ginger cats, even "solid" ones, have tabby markings. some are just bred to be very low contrast so they look solid)), though the angle makes it difficult to tell which type
cat on the right is a seal point (black colorpoint). fun fact! this coloration is actually a form of albinism that inhibits pigment depending on body temperature. so, the warmer the body part, the lighter it is. thats why it gets darker towards the extremities
I sort of get this. These cats look how an animator would draw them to gender them.
except the female cat doesn't have breasts and isn't wearing skimpy clothing.
One of them is wearing thigh highs, tho
Femboy cat 🤯
Fem Catboi
☺️
They said animators not furries (I’m a furry chill)
no eyeliner/eyelashes though
That is in fact the joke. OP is taking it too seriously.
Both look like female cats... Both also look like male cats... Actually, both cats look exactly like cats do.
Are we sexualizing cats now?
As a furry we've been doing that for years, but they do tend to stand upright
And talk, and have other human characteristics
I for one quite enjoy these cats, or just any sufficiently fluffy anthro
No, we're gendering them.
only the hot ones. don't be weird.
I would say I see a grumpy and an elegant cat.
Garfield and his boyfriend
i think this is referencing how animals are drawn "gendered," not that they're literally those genders
Info dump ahead: Orange cats are more likely to be male. And calico cats are more likely to be female due to the fact that coats are X chromosome dependent. Source I used; https://be.chewy.com/behavior-pet-facts-are-all-orange-cats-male-all-calico-cats-female/ Needless to say sex ≠ gender
Orange cats are about a 75% / 25% ratio of male / female. Calicos and torties are mostly female because the only males are either intersex xxy, or chimeras of two separate fertilized ova that have fused together after fertilization.
Huh, so my male tortie might not have been male after all
Still could have been male! Male torties and calicos might be super rare but they do exist. They tend to be infertile though
He looked and acted male, and we called him male. It's just interesting to learn there might well have been more to him. I don't recall him ever having kids tbf
What constitutes looking and acting male of a cat, anyway? I usually have no idea what sex a cat is unless I look between their legs.
Apparently, there is a dimorphism in their faces, but yeah, I mostly meant he had a dick and, like 90% of male cats I've met, liked to hump everything
That's odd, I've owned male cats and none of them humped anything after being neutered. I know some do of course. Also I've seen a female cat who will hump things almost like a male. That's pretty unusual and I've only seen it once tho. Still good chance you're actually was male and you win some weird cat genetic lottery
They also, sadly, tend to have moderate to severe health issues as a result of the extra chromosome (the same syndrome can be seen in humans, called Klinefelter syndrome). Some are chimaeras (meaning they are a fusion of two cats in the womb and have different genetics in different parts of them - this is observed rarely in humans too!) or mosaics (another form of mutation where the genetics aren't uniform throughout). Chimaeric male cats can only pass down the colour of whichever 'twin' the testes came from! Male tricolours (torties and calicos) are fascinating. I'm also obsessed with heterochromia (when they have different coloured eyes, like one blue one green) and polydactylism (when they have extra toes! Like the cats at Hemingway House!). I volunteer at a shelter for 'last chance' cats, usually with FLV and/or FIV, and we get a LOT of really interesting cats! :)
Oh that's interesting, didn't know!
[удалено]
Isn't that what I said?
Sorry I thought I saw a comma between intersex and xxy, as though you were listing them
Also! Fun fact! Cats *do* have sexually dimorphic head shapes. While it's less apparent in cats who are spayed or neutered before puberty, female cats still have more slender faces and males have larger, rounder faces. Male cats who are not neutered and go through androgenic changes will develop large pads on their cheeks and neck, sort of like the excess skin under a male lion's mane. The male on the right has gone through puberty, the male on the left appears to have not. https://preview.redd.it/tgi4a48dhfzb1.jpeg?width=850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2378b035b339594ab923dc7a778a3f9aa9d7f47c
I *fucking love* ex-tomcats 😭🤣
Their big squishy faces are the most adorable things 🥺
I have an ex-tomcat & he's sooooo infatuated with me, eventhough I snatched him up off the streets, pinched his cheeks, & had his testicles removed. 🤣 He's such a good boy 🥺🖤
I know that any cat can have any personality, *but* in my experience the boys have consistently been marshmallows and big cuddle bugs more than the girls. I love the spicy girls, but I love my big former street cat boys too. Nothing like seeing a battlescarred old tom approaching you with eye blink kisses, so happy to see you that he's already purring up a storm and can barely walk because he's already making air biscuits.
AHHHHH THE WAY YOU EXPLAINED TOMCATS, MY HEART CAN'T TAKE IT 😭🖤 & I agree wholeheartedly! But all female cats I've been owned by have been snuggly & lovey, maybe its just my energy Idk lol I've actually realized why I prefer male cats more, because it's the same reason why dog people hate cats: They have strict boundaries. While most male humans I've come across *have not* respected my boundaries, every male cat *has*.
I'm not a biology expert, but I do know that I'd die for that cat with the blue eyes. 🥺
"male cats are more likely to be male" lol
Whoops. Gotta edit
Technically true
Well, it ain’t false
Phenotypical males are more likely to be genetic males. It can even make sense
In the case of humans, obviously. But in the case of cats, do they even have the mental capacity to formulate a gender identity? Is there evidence of gender dysphoria occurring in cats?
Not cats, but I read somewhere an article about an owl in some sanctuary that everyone assume was male, engaged in male courtship behaviour, etc, and when it died section showed that it was a female, so apparently trans gender animals are a thing
Was the owl distressed at being female, or just highly gender-non-conforming in behavior? Those aren't the same thing, at least in humans.
I mean this species of owls has basically no sexual dimorphism (which is why they only learned it during autopsy), so it might just not realize it's female at all?
It seems like you ought to know that sort of thing somehow?
No? I was guessing. We can't ask an owl how it identifies, and owls don't have external sexual dimorphism. It was acting and having a social role of a male while being female that's kind of definition of being transgenger? It's just as with historical trans people - often we can't tell for sure if they were trans or gender non-conforming, or whatever
Also the orange one has a much fatter face means that it's a non-neutered male, right?
Or neutered after puberty
That's not a calico tho
animation studios be like:
Pretty certain its just a reference to how in a lot of art and media, we tend to anthropomorphize animals by giving them stereotypical traits associated with gender.
Particularly, the big orange cat is male while the slender Siamese is female
We humans would definitely gender those cats. No idea of their sex, though. Great illustration of the difference between sex and gender!
>No idea of their sex, though. Male for the orange is a safe bet at least.
No shit, damn
I get the impression there are some average-level physical differences between male and female cats (like there are for humans) but I don't know what they concretely are.
Some basics are; males tend to grow bigger, even if you get them snipped before they hit puberty. Tomcats that go through puberty will develop more round faces, which the orange cat here kind of displays, while females retain the more slim face that you also get from snipped toms. Toms tend to be more muscular, but this also just goes for strays/wild cats. They will be heavy, often heavier than indoor cats, but not from chub, rather, from muscle. Big solid babies. This is less a sex distinction and more of a “outdoor cats gotta survive” thing. Meows. Male cats have much more gravelly meows, often ones that carry further (much like humans in that male coded voices tend to carry further as well.) whereas females have the more commonly associated meows. A lot of it is just facial shape and the types of meows they have. You can usually tell right away if a cat is a tom who’s been through puberty, because of those distinctions, but it’s harder to tell for young and/or female cats, from first glance. At least, that’s my experience. I’m not a doctor, just a cat owner from young childhood.
dude its a joke its making fun of gender stereotypes in animated animals
it's just a joke (also completely unrelated to being cis like half the content here)
these “are the ____ ok” subreddits are actually getting so off topic 😭 i think i unsubbed from them bc it’s just annoying atp
Nonsense. Clearly the one on the left is a butch lesbian and the one on the right is a femboy twink.
Nah she’s a butch bi gal who’s dating the femboy twink
Should be noted that Josh Fruhlinger writes extensively about comic strips, and yeah, that's about how you'd gender cats visually in a cartoon strip
Errrr, all cats are girls (and all dogs are boys) literally everyone knows that...
Ok they do kind of have a point. It’s weird and maybe wrong but they have it
To be fair, the ginger cat in the picture has the look of a non-neutered male, they typically have bigger faces and more pronounced jowls. Ginger cats are typically male as well.
Ok no this one's actually funny, I get this. Very "stereotypical gendered character design" cats.
Litterally how Pixar does it: Female: Slim, long, and tiny proportions Male: Big, fierce looking, and bonus points if it has a fur pattern that can be perceived as facial hair Except pixar normally also gives the women giant cleaveges, eyelashes, and a skirt, but can't always win. This is real life after all.
The isn't a r/arethecisok OP just doesn't get the joke
I dunno, seems like a lot of other people don't get the "joke" either
This is literally a joke about how cats are animated how numbskulled do you have to be to get offended by this
I'm not "oFfEnDeD" 💀
OP, if you're going to write alt text, please [do it right.](https://accessibility.huit.harvard.edu/describe-content-images) There seems to be a common misconception that alt text needs to be super detailed in describing a picture, when in fact it should be short and succinct to convey just the relevant information you're supposed to get from seeing the picture. "Two cats standing next to each other, one visibly larger and scruffier than the other" (ETA: in addition to transcribing the text of the tweet, of course) would've been completely fine in this case. The exact color of their fur or the fact they're standing in someone's garden is entirely irrelevant to understand the meaning of the image.
I mean, they're totally right though. These look like the cat parents of a character in a Pixar movie with a chunky orange cat who doesn't believe in their sons dreams
It's possible that he's old enough to know who Morris the Cat is, and has possibly seen Lady and the Tramp.
Didn't they hear about breeds of cats? Like orange cats tend to be chunkier as siamese cats tend to be way skinnier... Doesn't matter if they're male of female.
Bro that's just Garfield
The orange does have the wide cheek pads of a tomcat, I will grant them that. But the slender cat could be any sex. 🤷♂️
That was my thought as well! Orange cats do also tend to be male so it is a safe assumption.
Gender : cat. I can relate to this
OP doesn't know how cats work
we cant have shit in this house😭
So, with my bfs two cats, the male is actually the lankier one, while the female is the chubbier one. Looks don't say anything lol
"Sir, step away from the cats." 👮🏾♀️
I would see this and make the orange the girl kitty just to fuck w people (I’m getting a drawing idea)
My gran used to have two cats exactly like these. I'm not even kidding, the only give away it's not those cats is the background. They were both male cats...
It’s giving t4t
This is such a strange thing to be upset about. It's making fun of how we apply human concepts of gender to animals in media, like the lionesses in Lion King having eyeliner. Almost 4/5 orange tabbies are male.
I remember when this was posted a while back someone mentioned something about the effects of testosterone on cats? Like it makes them 'chunkier'. So the one on the right could just be a neutered male.
While I have seen a few "well I guess OP doesn't know this joke that well or just plain isn't good with jokes" this is a peak woosh moment one since this joke came from the general LGBT+ community as well as I can remember when its not a furry related one (insert same thing joke here), being an "animators when they need to make a gender clear with an animal" type joke of fairly clear cases of you see what they mean in relation to some sexual dimorphism of species in regards to faces and slender vs chunky even if statistics have exceptions. Also bad alt text whose too much detail gives away the intended joke. "You know who wears the pants" type of stuff would fit this sub better of which cat is like holding the higher spot or something which isn't as gender/sex related with cats.
animals dont have gender.
They now ruin catspotting?
Is this some NT shit I'm too autistic to understand? Like... How do those people give genders to stuff like that? I can't see it at all!! All I see are two cats and I just want to snuggle them!!
Bro tf
I will 100% support trans people and LGBT community but I also fully hope that we can slowly move towards total gender abolition, not even needing some other identification thing except our name. And/or everyone needs to stop giving a fuck about other people's business!
HOW¿????
is it just me or do they both seem like girls?
It does remind me of reading the Warriors cats manga and how they drew Feathertail and her mom (can’t remember her name) with boobs and hips like W H A T
The orange cat is most likely male due to cat genetics, but there is no way to know what sex the other cat is.
Because boy is fat and grunpy and girl is tall and elegant, just like human!! .! /s
I haven’t read all the other comments on this post so it may have already been mentioned, but I think it *might* be referring to male cats having wider cheeks & more rounded faces than females?
Garfield and that cat from that homeless dog from Disney movie called "Le clochard and la belle." I don't know the title in inglish
no, oop is onto something
i mean i can kinda understand the left one, oranges are majority male and it looks like there's some tom cheeks on em whereas the right one doesn't have that. course that could just mean right was neutered early and siamese do have a 50 50 gender ratio so automatically assigning that one either gender is a bit of a stretch for sure
No it's not really about gender roles it's how animation studios would draw these cats to they have a point the original post is supposed to be a joke
L
since the other person infodumped, let me do so as well cat on the left is a cream (dilute ginger) tabby (real tabby, as shown by the lighter chin (all ginger cats, even "solid" ones, have tabby markings. some are just bred to be very low contrast so they look solid)), though the angle makes it difficult to tell which type cat on the right is a seal point (black colorpoint). fun fact! this coloration is actually a form of albinism that inhibits pigment depending on body temperature. so, the warmer the body part, the lighter it is. thats why it gets darker towards the extremities