I thought he looked a little cross-eyed in the profile picture.. does he always have that "I'm up to no good" look?? I thought his eyes were blue.. what colour are they?? grey maybe? Don't think I've ever seen a light coloured cat with eyes like his. His face markings are really beautiful, he's so symmetrical! Need more full body shots though!
Torties are pretty neat.. I've read about it a lot.. but some of it is over my head.. my understanding is that since Nova is a girl she has 2 X chromosomes. one X chromosone has the coat colouring bits of black and the other orange.. but only one can be active at a time. At some point when she was in the womb, the one that was off randomly switched on, and the one that was on, switched off and that's how she ended up with black and orange.
Apparently if I cloned her, I would get either a black or an orange cat (whichever ended up being active second), not another tortie. And I think that's pretty cool

(I tell her all the time how unique she is

). There's some interesting stuff on it out there, because I guess it's genetically similar to some sort of skin condition that people can get.
It's thought that there are other side-effects of this "X-inactivation", but I don't think it's all been figured out yet. I've had two torties, and both were trouble makers, talkative and love water.. not sure if it's a coincidence or not.. but I know torties have a rep for being mischievous

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Boys are rarely torties because you need two X chromosomes I guess.. boys can occasionally be XXY instead of XY, both cats and people..sometimes that has some side effects (sterility, etc), sometimes no side effects at all. I think male Calico's (tortie + white) might be more common.. so calico probably works differently, haven't read up on it.
Aaah my nerd shines through.. was only so long I could hide it!
