Ginger Cats: Why Most Are Male and the Orange Gene

Why are most ginger cats male?

Because the orange gene is on the X chromosome. Scientists suspected this for more than a century, and in 2025 two teams confirmed it by finding the gene itself. Kyushu University sets out the logic plainly:

• Males have one X chromosome. If it carries orange, the cat is ginger. One copy is enough.
• Females have two X chromosomes and need orange on both to be fully ginger. That needs a ginger father and a mother who carries orange, so it happens less often.
• A female with orange on one X only is a tortoiseshell or calico. Early in development one X is switched off at random in each cell, so some patches of skin make orange and others make black.

So the same gene that makes most gingers male makes almost every tortoiseshell and calico female. They are two sides of one coin.

What percentage of ginger cats are male?

About 80 percent is the figure usually given. The Morris Animal Foundation, a US charity that funds animal health research, stated in a 2016 article that about 80 percent of orange tabby cats are male. It does not cite a single population count, so we checked it against survey data.

The best large sample we found is a UK survey published in the Veterinary Record in 1999. It gathered the coat colour and sex of 9,816 cats seen at UK veterinary practices and estimated the frequency of the orange gene at 19.7 percent, about one X chromosome in five. If cats paired at random, a male would be ginger about one time in five, and a female (needing two orange X chromosomes) about one time in 25. That works out at roughly five ginger males for every ginger female, in line with the 80 percent figure.

The middle rows are arithmetic from the UK survey's gene frequency, assuming random mating, not counts. Real populations vary with local breeding. We found no published count of ginger cats by sex for Australia.

Two caveats. The gene frequency differs between places and over time, so the ratio will too. And a shelter's mix depends on which cats come in, so a given rescue may have more or fewer ginger females than the arithmetic suggests.

What did the 2025 orange gene studies find?

Two independent teams found the same answer and published it together in Current Biology on 15 May 2025.

• Kyushu University (led by Professor Hiroyuki Sasaki) compared DNA from 10 orange and 8 non-orange cats, found a deletion in the ARHGAP36 gene shared by every orange cat, and confirmed it in 49 more. In skin from calico cats, ARHGAP36 was much more active in pigment cells under the orange patches than under black or white ones. Kyushu's summary describes how that activity steers pigment from dark eumelanin to lighter pheomelanin.
• Stanford University (led by Christopher Kaelin and Greg Barsh) narrowed the X chromosome down to a roughly 5,000-letter deletion. In their paper it matched coat colour perfectly in 188 more cats: all 145 orange cats, 6 tortoiseshell or calico cats carrying one copy, and none of 37 non-orange cats.

Three details stand out. The deletion sits outside the part of the gene that codes for the protein, so it changes when and where ARHGAP36 is switched on rather than the protein itself. Stanford reports that the gene is not normally active in pigment cells in mice, humans or non-orange cats, which makes this an unusual way to make an orange coat. And the Stanford paper says the evidence points to a single origin for orange more than 900 years ago, before modern breeds existed.

One honest limit: ARHGAP36 is active in other parts of the body, including areas of the brain. Kyushu's Professor Sasaki notes that owners believe coat colour and personality are linked but says there is no scientific evidence for it yet. Nothing in either paper shows the orange gene changes behaviour.

Are all ginger cats tabbies?

Yes, genetically. In black or brown cats, two copies of the non-agouti gene make the coat look solid by hiding the tabby pattern. In orange fur that switch has no effect. A 2009 study in Genetics tested 55 orange or calico cats from a research colony: all the orange cats showed pattern, including 10 that carried two copies of non-agouti and would have been solid black without the orange gene.

That is why you almost always see the M on a ginger cat's forehead, rings on the tail and some striping, even on a cat a listing calls “solid ginger.” Some gingers show the pattern faintly, especially ticked or heavily shaded coats, but it is there. The four tabby patterns (classic, mackerel, spotted and ticked) all come in ginger; see our guide to every moggy colour and pattern for how to tell them apart.

Pedigree show standards do recognise a “solid red.” The Cat Fanciers' Association Persian standard asks for a red “without shading, markings, or ticking.” That standard rewards the faintest possible pattern, but the genetics underneath has not changed.

Ginger, orange, red, marmalade or cream?

Ginger, orange, red and marmalade are the same colour under different names; cream is a paler version of it.

One trap: some breeds call a different colour red. The UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory lists cinnamon, a version of the brown gene, as “(red)”, and that colour is not sex-linked. So a red cat in a breed that does not allow sex-linked orange is a different gene, with no link to being male.

Which breeds come in ginger?

Many breeds list red among their colours. These are the ones we checked in the Cat Fanciers' Association standards:

• Persian: solid red, red tabby and red smoke (CFA standard).
• British Shorthair: solid red, “deep, brilliant red” (CFA standard).
• Maine Coon: solid red and red smoke, which CFA calls cameo smoke (CFA standard).
• Oriental: solid red and red tabby (CFA standard).

Other breeds do not allow orange at all. The Stanford paper lists the Abyssinian, Bengal, Chartreux, Egyptian Mau, Ocicat, Havana Brown and Toyger as breeds whose standards do not permit orange or calico.

In rescue, almost every ginger is a Domestic Shorthair, Medium Hair or Longhair. A big fluffy ginger is far more likely to be a moggy than a Maine Coon; our Maine Coon guide shows how to tell.

Why do ginger cats get black freckles?

Usually because of lentigo, a harmless build-up of pigment cells. The Merck Veterinary Manual describes lentigo in orange and orange-faced male cats as flat, dark spots that first appear on the lips and eyelids, often before a year of age, and later on the nose and gums. It says the spots are not precancerous and have no medical consequence.

Lentigo spots are flat. A spot that is raised, growing quickly, bleeding, ulcerated or sore is a different matter, so have your vet look at anything that does not fit the pattern.

Are ginger cats really friendlier?

People think so; no study has shown it. What the research measures is perception:

• In a 2012 online survey of 189 people, reported by UC Berkeley, orange cats were the colour most often rated friendly, and white and tortoiseshell cats were rated less friendly. The lead author said there was little evidence these perceived differences actually exist.
• A 2016 UC Davis survey of 1,274 owners linked more reported aggression toward people to tortoiseshells, calicos and torbies (the female orange-carrying coats), and to black-and-white and grey-and-white cats. Ginger males were not among the colours singled out. These were owner reports, not observations of the cats.
• Stanford's Christopher Kaelin told Stanford Medicine he could not rule out an effect of the gene somewhere untested, but thinks orange cats' reputation is more likely due to most of them being male.

That last point is worth a second look. Desexed male and female cats differ only a little on average, as our male or female cat guide explains, so the sex explanation is weak too. The honest summary is that the friendly ginger is a well-loved story that has never been tested on the cats themselves. A shy ginger and a bossy ginger are both perfectly normal.

Does the reputation help gingers find homes? Not reliably. A study at a New York State no-kill shelter found the cats it recorded as yellow (most likely gingers) had the longest stays of any colour (Brown and Morgan), while a University of Sydney study of a Sydney shelter found ginger cats' stays did not differ significantly from black cats' (Miller, Ward and Beatty). Colour is a weak predictor of how fast any cat is adopted.

Adopting a ginger cat: what to ask

Colour tells you the cat's genes, not its character. When you find a ginger you like, ask the rescue or foster carer:

• Is it a lap cat, a sit-beside-you cat or an independent one?
• How does it react to visitors, children, dogs and other cats?
• Does it have any freckles or skin spots the vet has checked?
• When was it desexed and vaccinated, and does it have any health conditions?
• Does it have a bonded friend it should go home with?

For the steps, fees and state laws, read adopting a cat in Australia; budget with what a cat costs; and if you are weighing a kitten, kitten blues covers the first hard weeks honestly.

Find a ginger cat near you

These pages show ginger and orange cats listed by Australian rescues right now, with age, sex and desexing status, and a link straight to the rescue. They are refreshed regularly. Because listings use the shelter's own words, a ginger cat may be described as orange, ginger or marmalade.

• Sydney: ginger cats in Sydney
• Melbourne: ginger cats in Melbourne
• Brisbane: ginger cats in Brisbane
• Perth: ginger cats in Perth
• Adelaide: ginger cats in Adelaide
• Anywhere in Australia: all orange and ginger cats for adoption

Still deciding? Try the dog or cat quiz, the what cat breed am I quiz and the adoption readiness check. Weighing up colours? Our black cat guide covers what shelter studies found about black cats.