# Sweet little visitor



## robert@fm (Jun 4, 2012)

http://s301.photobucket.com/albums/nn77/robert-fm/Tortie 2012/

I've at least three times seen this gorgeous tortoiseshell cat sitting on my bedroom windowsill; the last time, she fled as soon as I picked up my camera.  This time she stayed put and I managed to grab eight pictures, and have uploaded cropped/resized versions to my Photobucket account (album link above).

I don't know who she is or where she comes from (presumably somewhere near), but she's obviously well looked-after (probably a bit too well), and loved.

Sadly a lot of the pictures came out like this:







but I'll post some of the better ones in my next post.


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## robert@fm (Jun 4, 2012)




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## casey (Jun 4, 2012)

What a gorgeous cat.


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## cazscot (Jun 4, 2012)

What a beautiful cat .


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## Vicsetter (Jun 5, 2012)

You ought to get out more, me thinks!


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## Andy HB (Jun 6, 2014)

Erm! She looks like our cat!

We moved back into our London house in August/September 2013 and she has been spending more time with us than she did with the previous occupants.

I wonder whether that explains why you haven't seen her for quite some time?

She is VERY timid though and runs at any slight movement (we need to be almost lying on the ground and stroking one of our other cats for her to accept being stroked too!).


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## Mrs Mad Ronin (Jun 6, 2014)

Awww what a gorgeous cat


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## Andy HB (Jun 7, 2014)

Nope, just looked at Rosie (our cat) a bit more closely. Whilst the colouring is very similar, I can now confirm that the cat in the piccies is not our Rosie!

Andy


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## KookyCat (Jun 7, 2014)

She's rather lovely, hope she continues to visit!


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## Caroline (Jun 11, 2014)

the cat is gorgeous but why are cats always she and dogs always he? I have some very feminine female friends who prefer dogs and some very masculin male friends whoprefer cats....


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## robert@fm (Jun 11, 2014)

I have known male cats but this one is a tortie hence almost certainly female — the genes for black fur, brown fur and orange fur are co-dominant and in the same place on the X chromosome, so the only way a cat can have two of them is to have two X chromosomes, which means a female or an XXY male, and the latter are very rare.


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## Sally71 (Jun 11, 2014)

robert@fm said:


> I have known male cats but this one is a tortie hence almost certainly female — the genes for black fur, brown fur and orange fur are co-dominant and in the same place on the X chromosome, so the only way a cat can have two of them is to have two X chromosomes, which means a female or an XXY male, and the latter are very rare.



That's really interesting, I knew that tortoiseshells are almost always female but didn't know why.  So how do you get tabbies then, they can be either sex can't they, is there a different gene for the pattern?  Just curious!


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## robert@fm (Jun 11, 2014)

I think there's a tabby gene; one cat my family had was a brown/orange tortie who was also a tabby, and the result was quite interesting.  (She was called Ginger, which as the family surname is Baker, led to the occasional joke about her playing drums.)


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