Torbies

If Wikipedia says it, it must be true, right? I looked up calico cats and found ideal descriptions of our little grey striped, orange tinged girls--tortoise shell + tabby = Torby! I had the family at school today for a grounds working event and they were oohed and ahhed over, and everyone said they couldn't have one for one reason or another. I said that's fine, they aren't ready yet, this is a social event meant to generate interest.
A Torby girl--notice the yellow stripe mixed in with the gray.

We parked in the sun and I discovered another Torby; one of the Gellie girls has little bits of orange throughout her coat, and the place on her tummy where the stripes meet up has one section of pure orange stripes. There is one true tortoise shell in the bunch, but I would say all the others are very much torbies, tabby striped grey with orange bits.

A gray Tabby (on top) fighting a Torby (on bottom). What's the first rule of fight club again?

The pigmentation is a genetic thing carried on the X chromosome and the two colors, red (orange) and black (grey), require 2 alleles (??), and normal males are incapable of having 2 alleles, what with their Y chromosome and all, hence tortoise/calico coloring is extremely rare in males, and often the males cannot reproduce. Interesting if you're into gene stuff at all.

All 14 crashed out in the car by 11:00.