Long time Cat owners Help--Can the kittens be from the same litter?

[Justice wanted]

Okay. If I the ability to download or upload pictures I would. BUT I don't. Now a friend of mine found 3 8 week old kittens hiding under her porch. She has taken them in and all three are doing well. She's just trying to figure out if all three are from the same litter or somehow managed to find themselves together,

all three are males


One is all white


One is Gray and white

One is various shades of orange. It's like a light orange with dark orange strips.

Can they be from the same litter?

[Angry Dragon]

1. yes

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Sometimes kittens in the same litter have different fathers.

That's one of the peculiarities of cat reproductive biology. When the female is in heat she might have several "lovers" within a short period of time, and the result is that the kittens in that litter are a collection of half-siblings. That's one reason they might not all look alike. Another reason is that the inherited characteristics of coat pattern and coloration can be somewhat random if both parents aren't purebred.

[Graybeard]

3. They show their "family tree" in their coats.

Somewhere in the lineage was a white cat, a gray cat, an orange cat , etc. Sometimes all of these colors appear on a single cat.

[HopeHoops]

4. Absolutely. And siblings get along very well together in the same house.

[Justice wanted]

5. Thanks for the responses! She is going to keep them but she was concerned about

them getting along but they seem to be especially the Orange one and Gray and White one are always sparring.

[MadrasT]

8. Also,

Lots of times, even if same-age kittens aren't literally siblings, if they are all raised together they behave as if they are.

I have a male and a female that came from different litters, but were together from the age of about 6 or 8 weeks and they grew up being bonded like littermates. (They are about 8 years old now, and still best friends.)

(Also, occasionally littermates grow up not really bonded at all. I also have two sisters who don't really give each other the time of day.)

So glad they found someone to love them!!! Yay!!!

[Rochester]

6. Yes, it's possible.

It's even possible if they only have one father.
Suppose the mother is a calico (orange and gray and white) and the father is (some color)-and-white.
Both have one out of two possible tuxedo genes (giving them partial white).
On her X chromosomes, mother cat has one out of two possible orange genes (lack of which produces dark fur, gray or black), so she has both colors. Father cat has only one X chromosome.
The all white kitten inherited two tuxedo genes, one from each parent, producing an almost-all-white cat.
The G&W kitten inherited one tuxedo gene, and the dark-fur gene from its mother only (if it is male) or from both parents (if it is female).
The orange kitten inherited neither tuxedo gene, and the orange gene from its mother only (if it is male) or from both parents (if it is female).
If the G&W kitten and the orange kitten are both female, then this scenario is impossible, because that would require the father to give an orange gene to one and a dark gene to the other. He only has one X chromosome, so he can have one or the other but not both (barring some rare genetic defect).
If the white kitten is 100% white, with not a trace of colored fur anywhere, it carries the dominant all-white gene, requiring at least one parent to be all-white also, but the parents could still carry the genes for the different colors underneath and pass them along if they don't pass on the all-white gene.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_coat_genetics

[quakerboy]

7. This one

Even though TL NR

[applegrove]

9. That is so cool. Now I know why vets keep telling me that my orange girl cat is a rarety.

[hyphenate]

10. Sure

The white gene is not on the same gene as the colorations of all cats--it's a random trait, even so far that a clone of a cat would not be identical to the original cat because of that randomness.

Black (or black dilute, aka gray) and red (or all orange patterns) are both possible even in the same family, and tabby patterns are also pretty much found in all colorations, sometimes very vividly, other times more muter.

It used to be commonly known that calicoes, those with both black and red, were most always female, because both are on the XX chromosone, and as a male only had one x gene, a male would have to be owner of an extra x gene, making them sterile, and xxy.

I've heard that more males are becoming calico, but it's still not a normal coloration.

But yes--the differences you point out are prefectly likely to be from the same litter.

[sammytko]

11. You almost described the litter I'm raising

One is a siamese, one is grey and the other is almost calico. The mom is dark grey with white paws. The dads are ????

Semi-feral mom is now fixed and won't be having any more babies. Babies will be fixed next.

[marzipanni]

12. A similar result occasionally happens with humans, too

http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/odds_and_oddities/twins_in_black_and_white.htm