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"After scolding one's cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word. And has filed it for reference."

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www.supernova-bengals.co.uk

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Best Wishes,
Maddy

I've seen a ginger bengal before!

Maybe the parentage was dubious but it was ginger without doubt, It was years ago so I can't remember where I saw it....I liked the look of it though, very unique!

Okay so lets talk about genetics .

The red or ginger color is a DOMINANT one, on a X ("female") chromosome : Xo. If the cat is XnXn or XnY, it's any other color as dictated by the other color genes (Xn being the recessive "not red" allele).
If the cat is XoXo or XoY, then it's red. If it's XoXn (female) it's tortoiseshell.

SO... if you have a ginger cat, it means one of its parent is ginger or tortoiseshell (one of the parents must have the allele and as it's dominant it would show) ! As that wasn't in the bengal standard/ancestry, it means the litter has 2 fathers, one of them a ginger male (I guess that would be the same for a serengeti).

So that's just a half breed, certainly not a full breed .

Of course you can have spontaneous mutations but they're rare .

Edit : on seeing again the photos... I guess the mother is a tortoiseshell as you can see a red spot on her head so there may have been only one (Bengal) father . I'd bet anything that the male is the red one .

I would join the bet and say that the orange one is likely the male in the litter. If it was a female, she wouldn't be solid orange but tortie. He certainly got it from mom because that's where his X-chromosome with the orange gene is coming from, so only mom could have given it to him. Daddy "only" gave him the Y-chromosome or he wouldn't be male. If the daddy of the litter was an orange tom, all the females would be torties and none of the males would be ginger. If it's coming from mom, statistically half of the kittens should be torties (if female) or ginger (if male).

Shame if it had been Bengal it would have been fab

OH really likes it too thinks its cute!

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"After scolding one's cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word. And has filed it for reference."