Column SFF Bestiary Cat Lore: Colors and Personality From ginger goofiness to tortoiseshell “catitude”, every coat has its stereotype… By Judith Tarr | Published on January 26, 2026 “My Wife’s Lovers” by Carl Kahler (1893) Comment 0 Share New Share “My Wife’s Lovers” by Carl Kahler (1893) In cat world, it is known: Coat color determines personality. According to the lore, tabbies are nice all-around cats, black cats—aka voids—are darkly mysterious but also sweet and kind (and the gene that gives them their black coat also seems to enhance the immune system—which, wow), grey cats are calm and a little aloof, white cats are reserved and shy (and often deaf), black-and-whites are big snugglers, all-color cats (tortoiseshells and calicos) have extra helpings of cattitude, and orange or ginger cats are mellow and friendly. Individual mileage varies widely, of course, and the science is a long way from catching up with the anecdata. Not to mention the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy (I expect my cat to be a certain way, so I unconsciously tailor my interactions accordingly) and the addition of breed traits into the mix. Purebred cats are selectively bred for certain traits, which may or may not be enhanced by the traits associated with the individual cat’s color. Maine Coon as gentle giant with a tiny chirping voice, Siamese (with its strikingly unusual coat) as loud and opinionated prima donna. Let’s pause for a minute and look at that Siamese coat. Siamese are born white or cream, but as they grow, their extremities become progressively darker. This is called temperature-sensitive albinism, or point restriction. They carry a gene that restricts the production of pigment to cooler areas of the body, particularly the legs, nose, ears, and tail. The warmer parts of the body may darken over time, but much less intensely. What color the points are depends on the cat’s basic color genetics, the point-restriction gene determines how and where the color appears. All cats, Siamese included, carry the color gene in the X chromosome. This gene will be some variation on red or black, and more rarely white (either dominant white or albino). The tabby pattern comes from the agouti gene, which modifies the basic red or black. For further cool points, black can be solid, but red is always some form of agouti. I can confirm that from local data. The calico kitten whom I’m typing around, with her Impressionist-painting coat in shades of black and orange with white paws and bib, has a plethora of black patches, all of them solid, but her larger orange patches (versus her numerous brushtroke bits) are boldly striped. She has a lot going on in the color department. When she was tiny, the lady who fostered her for the cat rescue thought she might be a boy. It can be hard to tell with very young kittens. As it turns out, she’s definitely a she, and that’s what most black-and-orange cats are, because each color is carried in a separate X chromosome. The tortie-calico continuum is fascinating not just for the wide variation in how it manifests. You can’t clone a tortie. Even identical twins won’t be identical in their color patterns, because each individual cell activates or inactivates its color gene in random fashion. The tortie in front of you is unique. Every tortie or calico activates the colors in a different way. A clone is normally produced from a single cell. That cell will contain either the red or the black, but not both. The clone, as a result, will not be a tortie or a calico. She’ll be some variation on either black or ginger. Male calicos (with white) and torties (without) certainly exist, though they’re rare. Genetically they’re XXY, and they’re nearly always sterile—a condition called Klinefelter syndrome. The other side of the tortie-color coin (and personality) is the orange or ginger cat. Most gingers are male. The red gene is recessive, and a male with only one X chromosome will be red if he has the gene, whereas a female has to have two red genes in order to manifest the red. Otherwise she’s a tortie or a calico. Torties, the lore will tell you, are complicated creatures. They have extra helpings of attitude. They’re sassy, often hissy, and famously opinionated. There’s even a name for it: tortitude. As a friend said to me about one of my two (I am a brave or foolish soul: I have both a tortie and a calico), “Of course she’s opinionated, it’s hard work to coordinate all those colors.” Gingers on the other hand are renowned for their friendly dispositions. They’re the mellow cats, the laid-back, let’s-get-along guys. Your ginger will drape happily over your arm or let you wear him like a purry boa. He may be sparing of his energy, and he’ll have a healthy appreciation for food. Some will tell you gingers are more trainable than most cats. Others will declare that there is one brain cell shared among all gingers. They take turns. You’ll know when it’s your ginger’s turn: he will, for that brief shining moment, show visible signs of intelligence. Personally I think that’s unfair to ginger cats. I’ve had a ginger who was basically a huge furry watermelon (his vet-approved fighting weight was not to go below fifteen pounds/7kg), and a couple who were wonderfully cuddly and quite bright. But I agree with the anecdata: ginger boys have a little something extra when it comes to sociability. How about you, cat fans? Have you found a correlation between cat color and personality? Does your cat fit the standard description, or are they totally and distinctively their own self? Not that every cat isn’t itself first and always. That’s the first rule of cat magic.[end-mark] The post Cat Lore: Colors and Personality appeared first on Reactor.