We have a breaking news announcement.
After 8 years and 3 different vets, we have found out that Tuna is a male cat.
Tuna was an apartment cat. He came to us from Kid 1’s friend who adopted him, asked us to watch him, and then did not pick him up. He has received the best veterinary care our money could buy. We were told he is a rare female orange cat by our previous vet.
Apparently not.
In retrospect, some things make more sense.
Wow. I guess he must be underdeveloped. In my experience unneutered male cats, mark there territories very intensely. It is hard to miss the smell.
Oh no, he is neutered. He apparently came to us neutered, which makes sense in retrospect since there is no scar for the equivalent procedure that would have been on a female cat.
I am stupid. I don’t know what to tell you. He is very fluffy and we never had a need to doublecheck.
Ah! I have a lovely young cat who moved in with me a few months ago. I named her Oly after the legendary Olasard the Ripper of Souls. Took her to the vet to be fixed only to find out after they started the operation that she was already fixed! Who knew?
Yes, even spay scars fade over time.
Our local cat rescue and the humane society, now put a green dye along the incision site so females don’t have to go through anesthesia (and surgery) twice.
This makes sense. Our floof cat has a blue tattoo from her spay mark.
My cat was given a bright green line tattoo on her abdomen right next to her incision so that any future vet will know she is spayed. I thought that was an interesting way to mark it. 5 years later, I’ve never checked to see how much it’s faded. But I’d guess it’s probably still visible.
Cats here get a blue ink tatoo in their ear. Easy to check.
We’ve had several female shorthaired cats who were spayed while under our care, and in later years I couldn’t find the scars even though I knew they had to be there. So not being able to detect a spay scar on a longhaired cat wouldn’t surprise me.
I had the same exact thing with one of my cats who had been a stray that stayed. I spent so long calling my cat “she” that I just didn’t bother changing it when I found out otherwise.
It didn’t help that Kitty had a bit of a pooch and let a kitten I got later nurse for comfort.
There was no visible scar on my 4yr old pitty we adopted. Vet went in and was like nope she’s already been taken care of after she got in there. She had no fur on her belly at the time due to shelter stress to hide a scar either.
You are not stupid. This happens all the time. We were adopted by a female kitten. The vet said she couldn’t feel her uterus and presumed she was spayed but she said with a laugh “you’ll know for sure if she goes into heat”. 2 weeks later this cat goes into heat driving us all crazy. Had her spayed immediately! So if the vet couldn’t tell, how were you to know?
Seriously Cats! *falls over laughing*
The Tuna-Gordon stare down pic has absolutely made my day.
Absolutely love that picture. Two alpha males doing the stare down!
Mine, too! The mutual “make my day…FAFO” looks are classic. Or maybe it’s “don’t even THINK about sitting on my keyboard”…
+1
Mine, too! so fun!
That’s a man, Maury! :DDD
Authors living with a big, furry, orange plot twist- you have to admit, there’s some poetic balance in that hehe.
+1
Life once again surpassed fiction!
“…big, furry, orange plot twist…”
Haaaaaaaaaa!!!
+1 😆
I had a short haired cat which was a neutered male but it was very hard to tell for some reason. Even the vet and vet techs had a hard time telling over multiple years.
Another time, I adopted a neighborhood stray and had him neutered after he was an adult and had spent some years on the streets. The difference in his face and shoulders was huge compared if he had been neutered as a kitten. There was never a question he was a male cat.
Yep. We got our four as near adults or adults and the males are much bigger then the cats we got as kittens and had fixed at that point. There is also, I think, a personality difference.
Captain Jack Harkness had a big head and huge jaw and shoulder development you could really feel the muscle. Good personality and even after years in the streets never sprayed in the house. Life was rough on the streets he was blind in one eye and one ear was really messed up. And the scarring on that side of his face was thick, he really liked it when I scratched him on that side. As you stated he was a big boy.
Someone abandoned 3 kittens around our ranch, we took them in and they are great barn cats. Vet visits, shots, checkups for a full YEAR, girl names for all of them…and a year later were told they are male cats!
At least you don’t have to change his name
It’s got to be all that fluff! We have two neutered short haired males and it is noticeable from the back that they have some “equipment”. We also have two spayed females with the same kind of fluff as Tuna. You can hide lots of things in that mass of fluffiness.
You’re lucky Tuna is a fairly gender-neutral name. Imagine how p*ssed he’d be if you’d been calling him Tina all this time. 😉
It could be Tonno for a boy! Change gender and ethnicity, all in one day 😀
What a pretty kitty! I love Tuna’s expressions. Thank you for the pics and story. It made my day!
Happen to us as well, just the other way around. Took in siblings, according to the vet there (animal welfare organization) all males. Never checked.
I think around 1.5y later the ‚Moritz‘ one got renamed ‚Marie‘.
Great pictures!
I guess I should have believed the story when my friend told me this happened with her cat.
Somehow, I don’t think this is going to change how Tuna orders you around.
Tuna is keeping you on your toes!
My wife works at a spay/neuter vet clinic and misgendering felines is a very common occurrence. Owners will bring in a “female” to be spayed only find it it’s a male and vice versa.
I remember in a Linda Howard book where the owner inherited a cat named Woodrow, only to discover the cat wasn’t a male when they found the cat in the barn nursing a bunch of cats.
So I guess be grateful you found out this way and not from a litter of newborns.
*nursing a bunch of kittens
I remember that book. I love the question of “didn’t you check to see if he was a she?” or something like that. 😂😂😂😂
OMG! I thought I was the only one that happened to! We had a big fluffy grey and white cat adopt us and I thought it was a female, but our vet said it was a neutered male. We stayed with Precious, because he liked the name 😉
We have a black cat (all 17 pounds of her!) that the vet thought was a boy until spay/neuter day. Max became Maxie when the embarrassed vet realized her mistake. 😊
Tuna is beautiful and has such presence!!
I got a fluffy black kitten = well I got two. Both were supposed to be boys. Evan turned out to be Evangeline. The Dude – was a dude
We adopted what we were told was a little girl kitty and we named her Mary as I was reading the Last Temptation of Christ at the time. We got her home and took her to the vet for her post adoption check up and found out that Mary wasn’t a good name. He was promptly re-named Judas! 🙂
It makes you wonder what else these vets have missed over the years.
we had a female orange cat. and she was female she had at least 2 litters before I got her fixed. she was my daughters and lived almost 9 years before getting some weird diseas from a tick off a bobcat
You know the butt is too floofy when…….🤣🤣🤣
This is so great! The story, the pictures! Love it! Made me chuckle and the comments were even better! 🤣🤣🤣
I see no compromise in the Gordon/Tuna stare down. 😁
Compromise? What is this word you are saying? I do not understand….
🤣😂 My mom had a cat dumped at her house, orange and white, check under the tail, no trouble puffs, definitely an innie. Years and many vet visits later, Um… good thing you chose a flexible name because she is a he. The vet who neutered him had made a neat purse stitch.
Lesson learned. Years later I had a cat delivered by the Universe. Look carefully under the tail, definite trouble puffs! OK, off to the vet with you! Vet calls much later, Good news, we’ve saved you a bunch of money! This cat is already neutered! His aesthetically minded vet had preserved the puffs minus the trouble. So new lesson, squeeze ’em! Because a visual inspection is completely unreliable!
Don’t you mean “squeeze ’em then run really fast”? I can’t imagine a cat appreciates being squeezed, especially if male and not neutered!
🤣🤣🤣
Ya know, I always wondered about Tuna, but s/he’s your cat, so I figured you’d know. That said, I do have a female ginger, bright orange. Surprised me and the vet both the first time I took her in. We just assumed male without checking.
mwahahaha!!!
good thing you have a new vet. I love the photo of the Gordon-Tuna standoff!
Love the stare down. Out of morbid curiosity, who won?
maybe they are still there? 😉
I have a friend whose son wanted a male cat. He was a little boy and had no idea how to check. All she could get was a female. She told him it was a boy and named it Tom. Until the cat died it was never mentioned what sex it really was. 🤦♀️
I’d always assumed Tuna was male, because orange, and I don’t recall you ever mentioning gender. These things happen. Snip aka DestructoKitty was named Petunia Pig by his family of origin. By the time I adopted him, around 3 1/2 months old, they hadn’t bothered to examine him for many weeks. Upon closer examination I was pretty sure he was a boy kitty, and so it proved to be. Cheaper to fix him, harder to fix all the stuff he breaks.
This is the funniest thing I’ve seen today
Not uncommon. Determining gender after a few years seems to be somewhat difficult.
Orange cat superiority!
Tuna’s career as a Stealth Jorts is busted! Just don’t butter him, please.
XP
Breaking news, indeed!
😆🤣😂
Cats. It happens.
I had a boy that had to be spayed because the boy parts got stuck inside.
I had another boy they thought was a girl and scheduled him to get spayed, but ended up being neutered instead.
Tuna with the surprise twist! I’m side eyeing my female orange cat right now.
My adopted fluffy girl had a giant hot Pink tattoo from the surgery. If you scritched it she attacked. We call it the danger zone.
That is a delightful and hilarious discovery.
OmG. lol. I always thought so, by his looks. His following you around, and the male stare downs with Gordon.
at least he wasn’t named Princess or Fluffy.
Great story twist!
cats, need I say more….Senora (senora_the_cat70) is a girl….but is laid back like a boy. She is long haired like Tuna and absolutely loves being brushed, I am so lucky!! –
8 years and 3 different vets! That’s hilarious. And not on you at all. I mean, orange girls are rare, but not unicorns, why would you question Vet 1?
Right there with you – after naming my all black cat NYX as in goddess of night, found out that she wasn’t a she at all.
Didn’t matter, because Nyx owned that name.
Kid 1’s black kitten stray is named Noctis after a video game, but now the name took on a new meaning. Noctis is short for Noc Tis Over. Because that’s how he rolls. 🙂
My black cat is named Boomer-because that’s the sound of my stuff hitting the floor😎
Family had a grey cat named Wilbur. Eventually found out Wilbur was a girl. Too late. Wilbur she always was. 😉
I adopted two male kittens from the pound, one black and one tuxedo, who I named Smokey and The Bandit. I joke that when they were neutered, they gave Smokey (now a female) a sex change. Weirdly some people think I am serious.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
As a non-cat person, I gotta ask… What’s with orange being rare for a female? Is it rare for that breed of cat (is that the Maine Coon one?) or rare for female cats, period, to be orange?
Some cat coloring is tied to gender. Calicos and tortoiseshell cats are pretty much always female, and if you see an orange cat, it a pretty good bet that is is a boy, but there are a few exceptions. I’ve never heard of a male calico or tortie but I’ve met a couple of female gingers.
the rescue I volunteer for had a male tortie a few years ago. Gorgeous, fluffy boy. Sadly he didn’t survive kittenhood (freak accident).
Male torties and calicos have like Kleinfelter syndrome.
Or, even more rarely chimerism. I read about a male calico that was chromosomally normal and was produced when two embryos merged in utero.
The color gene is carried on the x-chromosome. The orange and black genes are equally dominant. So an orange female must get the orange gene from BOTH parents. Otherwise they will be a tortie or calico.
Had an orange girl once. Short hair so I’m certain she was a she. Never realized she was uncommon. She was the best. Used to open cabinets over and over to see if anything had changed since the last time she’d checked. She loved Christmas. So many packages to unwrap with her claws.
Thanks, Paula and Katherine. I know some birds have differences in color between genders (e.g., male cardinals are red and females are brown), the reason being that the male’s bright coloring is supposed to help with courting the females. Now I’m curious about the scientific reasoning behind cat gender colors, because the calicos and tortoiseshell colors were fairly vibrant from what I saw.
I predict some Googling in my future when I get home tonight.
tortie cats (black/orange) blend in remarkably well with the forest floor (they are the color of leaves and dirt).
orange cats blend in well with the bales of hay found in the barns.
savannah cats are the color of the sand in the desert where cats originally evolved.
brown tabbys (esp. classic tabbies) blend in well with the bark on trees.
black cats are shadows in the night
Karat,,my tortoiseshell tabby Maine coon, blends into the brown floor tiles amazingly well, though she *disappeared* into the dark wood floor in the last house.
Oddly enough, when HA got Tuna I thought (s)he looked almost exactly like my red harlequin – ie orange and white – Maine coon, Brandark. The house at the time had a reddish stain on the floor, which hid him very well.
(Alas, I lost him at 20 months because he was orange and managed to escape into the garage and poison himself by chewing on an insecticide sprayer. I had to get his “brother” Bahzell a kitten – which is why I have Karat. Yes, her proper name is Lady Alvina…
And there are *no* poisons in my garage.)
Brandark and Bahzell!! I love those names, you must be a fan of Weber’s War God series too! I surely wish he’d continue it.
Oh – I find that calico and torties blend in … I described my good tortie girl (Remy) as “dirt coloured”. And calicos seem to be urban camouflage. So fits in with nature’s way of letting females hide to protect the next generation.
Most female birds are much duller, subdued colors, so that they blend into the foliage when sitting On-The-Go nests ( bright red would be a give away, for example). In addition to mating or territorial displays for their brighter colors, they can also serve as decoys for predators.
We have a big (26lb) male orange cat named Bert (Bacharach), as in “Bert! Get back in here! Ach!”
🤣
Haha! good for Tuna! At least His name is pretty androgynous!
I once found a stray kitten when I was visiting my Mom in NYC. It was a ginger, so I automatically thought “boy” but there were no dangly bits so I couldn’t rule out girl vs neutered boy. When I took it to the vet they needed a name, so I named it “Brooklyn” since I figured the name would work either way. Turns out she truly is a rare female ginger (the first that the vet had ever encountered). She is now neutered and runs my sister’s household with an iron paw.
Ha!! See I had something like this happen to me bc my cat – who I was *not* going to adopt, I was just gonna take it to the shelter for my friend who had found this little kitten starving in the streets in Houston winter (where 40 is subarctic) but so she couldn’t keep the kitten in her apartment overnight so could I keep it and take it to the shelter in the morning. Sure, no problem! Except I get there and no, no, see this docked ear? That ear dock means it’s a “County Cat” from their TNR program and therefore could not be given to the City Animal Shelter. 🤦🏻♀️ Also one volunteers told me I was wrong and it was a girl kitty and not a boy kitty like my exam had said it was, the other thought I was right. So then I tried to take the skin and bones, starving but super social kitten to the county shelter. Nope, they won’t take it bc they don’t even try to adopt cats anymore. They’re strictly TNR and I should put this starving baby with great social skills back on the streets. In 40 degree weather. Also definitely a girl. So now the cat and I are at the discount vet bc my kids are in love, the no kill shelters are full and I just can’t put this baby on the streets. Vet tech: definitely girl. Vet comes in and I ask him to please check gender bc I have *years* of experience fostering kittens and I’ve never been wrong before. Nope!! I was right! It was a male kitten but he had been so recently neutered that the swelling made things LOOK female if you didnt get really up close and personal and look directly at the inner bits (which I did bc tiny kitten fosters its the only way). So Hi I’m a Foster Fail and a bunch of people misgendered my cat too. Lol I just named him TinyCat (Tiny for short) bc it worked for both genders and I wasn’t gonna keep him anyways. But Tiny stuck and of course he grew into a giant. lol
Gadzooks! Perhaps, even — zooterkins!
ROFLMAO!!!
I…can’t…even… 🤣
I guess if you never had a reason to look, you had no reason to know. Its not like the boys use the litterboxes differently. 😂
Orange girls aren’t that rare. Not like male torties. One in four oranges are female.
But…still….OMG indeed. 🤣
Different gender, same amount of love! Funny as all get out! 🤣
Lol, both my sister and I asked orange female cats that turned out to be boys. My second boycat decided there should be no confusion and flashed us all the time. Now I have two girl cats, one of whom I paid to spay, and the shelter tells me the other is female. She had to have a leg taken off so she won’t let me look down there for scars, and I don’t blame her.
My brother’s Frenchie had one puppy that had undetermined genitalia. We thought it was a girl but As she grew it just got weirder looking. Turned out she was born a hermaphrodite (had both genitals). Surgery was required and SHE now lives her best life. Luckily her name was Piglet, lol!
Sometimes I just want a laughing face button. 😀
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 That is breaking news.
I’m glad both my cats were tabbies. When they were kittens, I double checked with the vet we had at the time to make sure we had a male and a female. Sure enough, they were. 😁
Love the Gordon vs. Tuna stare down. Maybe Tuna wanted all the attentions, and was saying “no more today human. You pay attention to me. No discussion.” 🐱
Way back in the early 70s we got two barn kittens and one was really really fluffy. we named them Oscar and Felix after the Odd Ball Couple tv show, even though we were sure Oscar was a girl. We’d never been wrong before, so when we brought them to our vet, he didn’t check, and poor Oscar ended up with an unnecessary tummy scar.
Haha!
Reminds me of my Brother-in-law. He decided to get a cat for rodent control and answered an add for a free adult male cat. He’d never had a pet before so he was excited and even picked a name for it. He went to collect the cat, without a box or carrier, because Dude was a cool cat. The cool cat had an accident on his car seat. Mistake 1. He got home, presented his new friend to my sister who had to break the news to him that Dude was really a Dudette and had recently had kittens.
The cat was a cool cat. He never took her for car rides without a carrier. The cat never lived in the garage as he planned, his mom took her into the house. But my sister never let him live it down about believing someone without verifying it for himself.
Great cat story, brightened my day!
This is a really hard week for my family and I so needed the laugh this post provided. Thank you!
P.S. I just did a complete Kate reread as comfort-care for myself. I finished Blood Heir yesterday, so today I will start a Hidden Legacy reread. Ilona Andrews is my go-to when I need self care. You don’t even know how many hours of enjoyment you have provided to me. Again: Thank You!
LOL too funny. Lift the tail for a visual inspection. 1 hole is male, 2 is female. The vets should have figured that out years ago! That is how we confirmed it at the cat rescue 🙂
Cat. Hah ha
That happened to my family, but with a bird. When I was a kid I was gifted a baby yellow cockatoo. He was beautiful, entirely yellow with two big deep red circles around the cheeks.
I was told that it was a he, so my child brain named him Pepe. Fast forward a few years and Pepe laid empty eggs. After the “wait, what?” moment, we just started calling her Pepa.
a friend had a litter of Maine coon kittens. I went over to look at them and help her determine which genders the kittens were. I didn’t even check the brown torbie and white kitten because of course it was a female. A few weeks later, the vet told her she would have to neuter the kitten because it was a male, a very rare XXY kitten. D’oh.
Oh my, that is funny, especially after so long and vet visits!
Ok but how do you know the current vet is correct and not the previous 3?
The current vet is a cat specialist vet, who was checking Tuna over because he had a fight and ended up with a small abscess. 🙂
Ouch to the abscess. Tuna was hiding his true nature under all that fur. 😉
My first cat, Cinder, had all the wrong scars and got fixed for free because the vet was embarrassed to discover he was male only after opening him up.
You gave me a scare, until I read the whole comments. LOL.
Tuna is a floof and not a floofette. <3.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Tuna IS a very fluffy cat!
And Tuna is a neutral name, could be male or female cat.
Hmmm. The not picking up part explains a lot. Fluffy cats are quite modest, you might say. But the vet didn’t catch it? Wow!
and our faith in “experts” continues its decline
We had a house that backed up under the highway. I was picking cherries from our tree on a ladder when I was knocked off by a flying box of kittens and one mama cat. We all hit the ground. The cats scattered. We managed to round up the kittens and they were all orange point long haired Siamese with beautiful blue eyes. We kept one and named her Circe after the goddess of magic and daughter of the sun god. Went to get her fixed with same vet that told us she was a girl. He said well that went a lot easier than expected! Congratulations it’s a boy.
Our black cat came to us as a male and was promptly named Loki.. went to the vet to be fixed, came home as a spayed female and was renamed Diva. Apparently not uncommon 🙄🫣😂
That is *entirely* in character for Loki tho 😀
Speaking of Loki, this is such a troll post. “OMG”? “We have a breaking news annoucement”?!?!?
I admire House Andrews trolling skills.
The other *other* breaking announcement came today 😉 https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/maggie-the-undying-acquisition-press-release/
Be glad you didn’t name her Chernobog. 😁
Tuna probably did it on purpose for incomprehensible to human reasons. Because cats.
How did you find you She was a He then?
Vet visit 🙂
I actually had a rare orange female cat. Her name was Dizzy and we know forsure she was female as she had 3 batches of kittens before we could get her fixed. she lived to be 17 years old and died last fall.
We have her granddaughter cat, Baba Yaga, who is currently our oldest cat at 14.
Our newest cat is a long haired grey and white kitten. His mother was probably killed by a coyote and he was found in a garage at about age 3-4 weeks. First visit to the vet the day after we got him and we asked the vet the gender. He said “probably male” so that’s what we’re going with. I guess it doesn’t make any difference, we had a parrot named Pedro who laid an egg after we’d had her 20 years. I’m getting used to the idea that gender is what you make of it…
That’s wild! How did no one catch that? I love it!!
Hahahaha (laughing in hysterical pet owner) I imagine it was quite the shock 🤣 nice to know life can give you good/funny surprises as well!
Just glad he’s not a flerken!! 😝
I did foster work for over 11 years, and it was common for cats to be tattooed on the abdomen after being spayed. If the cat was spayed young, the spay scar might fade, and the cat could be re-opened unnecessarily. I know 3 cats that happened to. It was also common to tip the ear of a barn cat or feral cat, so that it was easy to tell from a distance that they had been fixed.
Rabbits are even harder – my sister and I had a male pet rabbit growing up whom we named Nibbles (definitely lived up to his name) then as adults my sister got another rabbit- she named the female bunny Luna then after a trip to the vet to get clipped was told she was a he – after contemplating we realized Nibbles the male rabbit was almost certainly a female since there was never any territorial marking 😆
Ok. Apparently we need to double and triple check the credentials of all future vets
We definitely need to double check the “credentials” of any future (and present) cats 😀
Oh, I am NOT surprised… I’m a retired Vet Tech. Nothing lordly, but I loved working in a general practice clinic. I have watched this happen TWO times. With the same DVM (golly gee), both fluffy black cats.
#1 – black short hair. We prep ‘her’ for surgery, ‘Ummm, Dr? We found testicals…. What?!’ He comes and feels around back there, and yep, we had to call the owner and tell them that (forgot his name, generic name) surgery would be a LOT cheaper, and cat needs a new name because girl is a boy. Name was not changed, family did not care, but were thrilled to have a lower bill.
#2 – employees cat is on the surgery table, opened for spay, and no girl parts are found, nothing. How can this BE? Call the breeder. Nope, ‘girl’. Dr finally goes back by the tail, lifting up the surgical drape, and go figure, there is a fine set of furry testicals. Persian boy, so LOTS of fur, but dear lord, that’s pretty stupid. I lost a lot of respect for that Dr by then.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Ha Ha 😂 hopefully he will not need kitty therapy
I remember the same happened with my grandparents cat. For years they thought he was she. He was called Rosie. 😆
And then his last name became Grier…
Wow, that’s a heck of a thing, I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes. ‘We don’t know what we don’t know’, which is why it’s exciting to keep learning.
1.) I share your confusion. We have a garden cat we’ve adopted, doesn’t usually sleep inside, doesn’t want to be held, so we don’t know its gender with any confidence. We think she’s a she???
2.) So… is our favorite innkeeper cat Olasard neutered? Or is there a possibility of cosmos wandering kittens in our future?
Life finds a way.
(Especially when it’s feline. All the attentions!)
A line from “Grosse Pointe Blank” about respecting a cat’s privacy comes to mind. It’s a plausible reason for overlooking that detail. 😉
At least Tuna is gender-neutral. By the time we found out Binx was female, she had learned her name.
Tuna is telling Gordon, “And you thought Saiman was tricky😉”
Love Tuna, what a beauty.
Not a cat person, but I love the keyboard
I’ve been told orange is a color that’s almost always female but I know nothing. Eight years? That kinda floors me.
That is hilarious, but understandable, if someone has a floofy bottom.
I am sure he appreciates your respect for his privacy. 🙈😸
Ok that’s funny! He’s too fluffy for anyone to notice really and why wouldn’t you believe your vet?
He is a very handsome boy!
I knew it!
Too funny! We recently adopted twin one year old sibling kitties. The rescue we adopted them from always neuters or spays before allowing adoption, so I believe them when they said we have a little girl and a little boy. 🥰💕💕
And now I have to go play referee. These two are very closely bonded and they do get along very well, but I stopped playing with the boy in order to read about Tuna. He got mad and took out his frustration by chasing his sister all over the house. They love chasing each other and play like this all of the time, but he somehow managed to scare his sister and now she’s hiding under the table and is afraid to come out!
Yep, they’re siblings all right, and he definitely reminds me of my brothers! 😂
Mine use to do that too. Then I would hear “meow, meow, meow” from my male cat wondering where his sister went. 😂
Tuna is an adorable kitty regardless of gender. However, this is hilarious. It took 3 vets to figure this out?
Tuners, anybody?
Hilarious xDD
Well, given what cats are like, I suspect that he didn’t care that called him a her or that you thought that he was a she. All the cats I’ve ever lived with were convinced that humans are somewhat slow. Actually, they were all convinced that we are very slow.
lol sorry this just made my day. Its hilarious but I’m glad Tuna is being taken such good care of.
It’s happened to me / my cats
Long time ago cat arrived on doorstep, of course not liked by my two contemporary cats; very friendly, confident, so left alone outside (summer in London) I gave a bit of food and water after a day or so, but hoped he would go back home. After little old lady upstairs had chased off wrongly alerted RSPCA (who said they never rescued confident, obviously well fed cats) I sighed and said he’d better come in. Small cat, very thick but short fur, all black; I spent lots of time deflea-ing, combing, but he was definitely shy about under the tail parts. Duly named ‘Persistent’, Percy for short.
A while later, we went to vet to start vaccinations. Vet looked to see if neutered and said, ‘ but she’s a little girl – couldn’t you tell, she’s got such a sweet face’ at which PURRSY just purred and looked winsome. All I could say was ‘very private cat’; we reckoned neutered (and were right).
Recently, I acquired two all black rescue cats – Edith and Ethel – rescue had checked for spay scars – but they weren’t certain about Ethel so had a look; and poor cat was delivered to me that evening with stitches, and an unnecessary scar!
😂
We adopted a trio (littermates) from a shelter – we really wanted 2 girls, and friendly, but these three were two boys and a girl, semi-feral (hadn’t had any human contact before 8 weeks), very scared of people, and had already been up for adoption for a month with no interest. I decided that if we didn’t take them probably nobody would, and my wonderful husband let me have them, even though cats we couldn’t touch and who would barely let us see them were a huge let-down after our previous sisters that had been hand-reared and were very human-orientated (had climbed onto him and fallen asleep, within the first hour of coming home with us).
We insisted that they be neutered before we brought them home. Went to collect them and the shelter staff looked embarrassed and said they hoped we didn’t mind that they had turned out to be 2 girls and a boy, not two boys and a girl. They are not even long-haired, but I guess nobody had been able to look at them very carefully until they were sedated.
Took 3 months of patience and tempting with food before we got to touch the girls, a further 3 months with the male looking at his sisters and evidently wondering why on earth they were allowing humans to stroke them. Then one day I managed to get a finger under the back of his jaw to scritch him there and he was: ‘Oh! Okay, you can do that again!’ Now his nickname is Fuss Monster (the others are Trip Hazard and Upwardly Mobile (she’s 3 years old and still climbs the curtains, which are in right state).
La Tuna is a group of college students that play music (folklore songs) and travel to places (in Spain).
Tuno would be of the integrants of the group.
If you plan to rename it, Tuno would be a great name.
Someone called as ‘Tuno’ as an adjetive is fun, cunning and clever.
Not sure if it fits 😂.
Tuna seems to be reasonably gender neutral. And he’s still a cat named after a fish, after all.
Very funny. Poor guy. We have a beautiful orange female in our household.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🥰
That happened to us, too, although “Lady” turned out to be “Duke”. But Duke had been “spayed.” We saw the shaved area on his belly. (This was 20 years ago, I can’t remember if he was tattooed, too.)
Face palm covering all comments re experts
I learned something new today. I didn’t know that about orange cats. We were adopted by a feral cat sometime after hurricane Irma blasted through. She and her kitten had made it through the storm. We couldn’t catch them, but fed and talked to them. Many years and litters and spay/neuter visits later, the colony is down to three spayed girls and one un-neutered boy who is good at evading capture. One of the girls is orange, and the vet said she was a girl when she got fixed. Never knew that was unusual. Our Biscuit is special!
Cats, man. Sneaky little buggers. He was probably laughing every time you called him a good girl.
Great update! Tuna is a spectacular kitty. Also loved the stare down pic.
I had similar story. I worked in home health, and sadly the caregiver spouse passed away suddenly and our pt was sent to a dementia facility. Family cleaned out the apartment totally and left Teal (gorgeous Himalayan) The nurse on case called me to come help, Teal was hiding in closet in empty apt with water bowl and some dry food. So sad! I took kitty and after an adjustment period got to the vet for check up and found out that she was a he! The key to his heart was being brushed.
That Tuna. Always up to something…haha!
😂😂😂🙄
🤯
ROFLOL
It really is funny, but these things happen.
We bought a male conure 4 years ago, or so we thought. One day he was acting really weird. I was holding him as we prepared to take him to the vet, and he laid an egg on me.
Whoa! That was a major surprise. 😳
We have a female orange cat who looks just like Tuna. The shelter spayed her so we’re pretty sure she’s a female. She is just as demanding of our attention. 🐈
So you’re saying you respected his privacy then?
Good. Excellent.
That was so great! 🤣🤣🤣
Thanks for the morning laugh!
that’s hysterical
the stars for the 15th are calling for transmutation looks like tuna did it the easy way…cats are sooooooo cool
LOL. Cats are always surprising. I stopped at a local farm for a dozen eggs and a tiny orange tabby kitten hopped onto my foot and tugged on my pants leg for attention. When I asked if I could take him, the farmer offered me another dozen ‘to go with’. this kitten had been literally tossed out of a car onto his driveway and when he stepped out to see why a car had pulled in, the kitten buzzed up onto his porch. Since it was late October in NH, he let the kitten in and gave it milk. It had runny eyes, a runny nose and a scrape on his chin where he had landed on the driveway. He was small enough to sit in the palm of my hand. Off to the vet where he got an exam, some meds. Since most orange cats are male, the farmer and I had assumed this one was also. Nope. Surprise. This poor kitty was about a 6 week female. No teeth yet. The vet checked her out and said. Don’t worry about this one. She’s a fighter and not about to fade. You feed her and keep her warm and you’ll have a real nice cat. Truer words were never spoken. As a kitten, to keep her warm, I carried her (not him) around in a fold of my corduroy shirts. People were rather surprised when I answered the door with a cat sticking it’s head out of the front of my shirt. For over 16 years Autumn kept me company in bed, on my desk, and ruled our 110 lb German Shepherd who mothered her. Surprise kitties are the best.
🤣😂🤯😅🤣
Been there, done that. When I was about six or seven, my parents adopted a kitten from my Aunt’s cat. My Aunt is a registered nurse. We were told the cat was a female cat and named “her” – Bella. Eventually, we discovered via a vet that ahem, no, the cat was a male cat.
Haha! Surprise!!
I wouldn’t bother checking the fluff if someone told me a cat was female, either.
But all those vets!!! You’d think one of them might have noticed???
Love the photos, especially the keyboard showdown with Gordon!
Sounds like you wasted your money with the former vet.
+1
I got a rare female orange tabby cat from a shelter almost 10 years ago.
She is enjoying life and loves to sleep in front of my keyboard while I work.
Tuna! Is it weird that I know the names of most of my favorite authors’ pets? And yes, I always thought Tuna was a male (look at the mane; look at stare-down with Gordon/Andrew); I guess I just never caught your referencing as female.
On side note: Just 13 days, 1 hour and about 13 minutes until Sanctuary!
That’s hilarious. It can be hard to tell, particularly when they are young. I swore up and down that my son’s girlfriend’s kitten was male. Nope, she was female.
FYI I didn’t know that most orange cats are male. We have a very large (close to 20 lbs) orange cat who is female.
To be honest, I don’t know much about cats, but all the pictures you shared made me think that Tuna was a male cat. It sort of scares me that it took three vets and eight years. I fear for the future of veterinary science/medicine/care. 😣 But at least you guys know definitively. Yay for progress?
Every Orange Cat I have.had has been a Male!
Same here.
I actually DO have one of the rare orange female cats in addition to two orange boys. Her name is Sunshine Maple and we call her Sunny.
You know, unfortunately, that’s a problem with a lot of vets. They just don’t understand cats at all. They tend to treat cats as just small dogs. That’s the reason why I only take my cats to vets that are specialized in cats or to cat’s only veterinary clinics.
We were adopted by a stray we thought was female , but Mixer turned out to be a neutered male. The vet said that the surgery had been an older style of neutering that pretty much eliminated visible signs.
I live in the Pacific Northwest and any stray or rescued cat is automatically fixed and has the tip of the left ear removed while the cat is under. This is universal here. If the left ear has been clipped the cat is fixed, it the ear is not, the cat probably is not fixed.
Ha, the look on Gordon’s face – totally reminiscent of my hubby’s attempt at studying ‘with a cat’. Interested to read in comments that you didn’t know the cat was neutered. In Australia, all cats are tattooed on the inner part of the ear with a symbol, circle with a bar through it, so it’s easy to tell. Councils also offer reduced registration fees for neutered animals. All to reduce the unwanted kits and pups.
omg indeed.
Bahahahaha! The same exact thing happened to us! We adopted a tiny little kitten from the Humane Society; she was listed as a spayed female. After many vet visits, regular grooming visits, and vets in multiple states, we discovered she was really a he when our fluffy black and white Sypder kitty was around 9 years old. I called my husband in shock to share the news – he always called her his “pretty princess – and without missing a beat he said that Spyder has chosen to live as a female and we must respect that. We lost her to cancer a few years ago, but she was his pretty princess until the end. #TransKitty
happy to hear that the vet is a “previous” one. 😊
My daughter worked at a fast food place years ago and fed the outside wild cats, there was a tuxedo kitten she wanted to bring home so she caught it and took it to the vets. She thought it was a girl because it was so small and she had been calling It Lucy but during the exam she found out he was a boy so he became Luciano. He answers to Lucy and he is 9 years old. when we had him 8 months he was hit by a car and now he has 3 legs and he is cross eyed sometimes, but he is very much loved.
I love the name Tuna and I thought it was a great cat name.
Tuna is Cat – they can be whatever they want to be and usually that is ordering about their staff in a manner that puts Her Grace Caldenia ka ret Magren to shame. Tuna is Awesome either way.
so funny!
I didn’t know female orange kitties were rare? daughter has one, who was sprayed! and she be hard to tell also due to the abundance of fluff!
Haha – I had a rare orange female cat when I was growing up. I had no idea until recently that it was rare to have orange females.
Hope Tuna is doing well!
My aunt has a big orange cat. She’s adopted him as a male and knew him as such for only a couple weeks before it was discovered that he was as she. Only a couple weeks. But I can’t switch it in my brain still.
Three vets to conclude he is a he? Yikes? Anyway, he is a cutie.
I missed this news in the Maggie update! Wow Tuna! Hope with all the vet visits he is doing great. Such a pretty cat!
Yikes! I am sure that Tuna was amused….the whole time.
nephew had 2 male gerbils, Ron and Neville for over two years. Ron liked to reach out of cage and pet the cat. One day Harry the cat petted back ,emergency vet visit left Ron alive but looking like frankengerbil. But after recovery Ron had an ephiany, which we shared when Neville had babies.
He is such a handsome fellow! Female gingers aren’t as rare as male calicos and torties. About 30% are female. Tuna is a great looking kitty. I hope he’s affectionate.
Clearly a TUNA Surprise! But it’s great that the name was appropriate to both iterations of Tuna.
Ok, but is that a Clapotis scarf he’s sitting on?
Tuna is winning Gordon lol!
What you have is a rare male cat. Why? Because male orange cats should be a solid orange not orange with white. Usually if this happens the male cat is sterile. But since nature finds a way, I wouldn’t count on it, lol.
Only female are orange with multi colors.
To me, he looks like a male. That would have been my first guess. In my area, there are a lot of female orange cats. I guess there must have been a breeding cat (male or female) who produced orange females.
When I was in the Peace Corps, I adopted a tuxedo kitten, even though I really wanted a tabby, because I was told that the tuxedo was the only female of the litter. Fast forward several months, and one day I was talking to my neighbor, and he said something about my cat being male. I was adamant that, no, Minchu was absolutely, positively female. Then, I took a closer look, and sure enough…🤦♀️
Tuna looks like our Shamus, but with longer flufff. Thus, I always thought “He” was always a he. Seems as tho this would be obvious. Shay has been gone for about 20 years now, and we still miss him, but your Tuna pics always bring back happy memories.
😂 thatt actually happened to me. I adopted a blood donor cat from a VET SCHOOL, and was told that she was a 6 year old named Cleopatra. she went to at least one check up at my regular vet and then moved with me for grad school. She and my male cat both saw my vet there for at least a couple of years and then I took her in with what I figured. was feline urologic syndrome. My vet said that was usually something that happened in males, but he would examine her and get back with me. keep in mind this was the most dominant female cat I had ever met, exhibitting very male behaviours. But she was fluffy, and if you tried to give belly rubs, you might come back with a bloody stump.
The vet called me at my office at school and let me know that Cleopatra was a Mark Antony. 🤷♀️ He was one of a litter of kittens that the vet school took in, spayed and neutered, and then housed with the females in one large run and the males in another. They must have switched out two of the cats early on and just never re-checked… for YEARS. Then when I got him I never checked, because why and bloody stump danger. the vets I took him to never checked, because adult cat and the owner should know, right?
He stayed Cleo until he passed away at about 17 years old because by then the name had stuck and he knew it.
I spent the night catching up with this blog and what great reading it was. Tuna is lovely and is of the rarest colour.
Love the photos, thank you. Honestly don’t know how a vet would make such a mistake.