Very few females carry this color on their hair.
There is nothing more rewarding for an owner than having a cat than few people have. Eyes of different shades, a little -known breed or atypical skills – such as bringing a toy after having launched it as a dog does – can make it even more special to their eyes. This attracts compliments, arouses curiosity and strengthens the pride of having an extraordinary companion. After all, who wouldn’t be happy to have a cat that everyone admires? Among the characteristics that can make a cat really special, there is the color of its coat.
On this criterion, some felines wear fairly unique coat colors. We think in particular of bluish gray, very elegant and often associated with the Chartreux, the chocolate brown which is rarer in domestic cats, or even golden beige, a rather bright and not very widespread shade. But this is also the case with red cats and more particularly on the female side. Indeed, red females are rarer. For what ? This is due to their genetics.
In cats, the color of the coat is linked to the sexual chromosome X. The gene responsible for the redhead is on this chromosome. In principle, in males, who have only one chromosome X (xy), the color depends directly on the gene they inherit. If they receive an X carrier of the red, they will be completely red. Otherwise, they will have another color. In females, it’s not the same thing. They have two chromosomes X (XX), each cell chooses one of the two Xs to activate at random. Thus, this often creates a “turtle scattering” coat which carry both the gene of the red and that of the black. The redhead is therefore generally uniform in males, but females can also be completely red, which is particularly rare. To do this, they must inherit the Roux gene for their two parents. If both are red, all kittens will be too!
To go a little further. Until recently, no researcher had succeeded in identifying the gene responsible for the red coat among cats. The mystery remained whole. But in November 2024, two independent teams found the answer. That of Gregory Barsh, of the University of Stanford, and that of the Japanese geneticist Hiroyuki Sasaki, of Kyushu University, concluded that the ARHGAP36 gene was at the origin of this color. They notably observed that the cells of orange cats produced 13 times of gene RNA than those of non -orange cats, confirming its role in the color of the coat.
