The Male Calico Kitten

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The day was almost over when Vicki came through the door. Vicki and Doris made up the local cat rescue organization called KATA. KATA stood for the Kitty Angel Team Adoption.

“Doc, I have a couple of questions,” Vicki said as she walked into the clinic’s treatment area.

“Sure, what do you have?” I asked. “You picked a good time, and we are just cleaning up to close this place down for the day.”

“I have a lady who swears she has a male calico kitten,” Vicki said. “Have you ever seen one?”

“Nope, I have to admit I have never seen one,” I said. “But, they happen, and I have talked with people, professional people, who have seen several.”

“I am pretty excited about this,” Vicki said. “I have heard that they are very valuable.”

“How old is this kitten?” I asked.

“It’s only a few days old,” Vicki said. “The lady mentioned that he didn’t have his eyes open yet.”

“Have you seen this kitten?” I asked.

“No, I just talked with this lady on the phone,” Vicki said.

“Do you know how often I am asked to look at a kitten and tell people what sex it is?” I asked.

“I know; people always seem to have problems with that, don’t they?” Vicki asked.

“And not only in kittens,” I said. “RMM, Ralph M. Miller, DVM, was a veterinarian who started writing cartoons during vet school to earn extra money. He has many books published and is very popular among veterinarians. To really enjoy his humor, you almost have to be a veterinarian or at least have a close association with the profession. A lot of his cartoons display episodes that are almost universal to all of our experiences. In his cartoons, he had a society. The society of veterinarians who have spayed tomcats, or something close to that.”

“That’s funny,” Vicki said. “Is that something that happens?”

“If a veterinarian is conducting his practice like he was educated to do, it should be exceedingly rare,” I said. “But people get busy, and it is probably a common error.”

“How could that happen?” Vicki asked.

“People get a kitten and think it is a female,” I said. “They give it a female name, they present it to a busy clinic, the pre-surgical exam becomes just a glance over, and the sex of the cat is not determined until the surgeon can’t find the uterus in the abdomen. So he has someone check under the drape, and there are the testicles.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” Vicki asked.

“Don’t get excited about a calico male until you know for sure that it is a male kitten,” I said. “I would never believe someone’s determination of a kittens sex unless I knew that the person knew what they were looking at. And even then, I wouldn’t believe it for something like this until I saw it myself.”

“So you think I should bring it in for you to look at?” Vicki asked.

“I would look at it for you,” I said. “You surely have heard my saying before, but when you are in a barn and you hear hoofbeats, look for a horse, not a zebra.”

“Okay, it might take me a couple of days, but I will bring the kitten by for you to check,” Vicki said.

Several days later, I noticed Vicki sitting in the reception area with an older lady. The older lady was holding a towel bundled in her lap. I could only assume that a kitten was buried in that towel.

I motioned Vicki and her friend into an exam room.

“I am guessing now, but everything tells me that there is a kitten somewhere in that towel,” I said.

“Yes, we are worried about exposing this little guy to the clinic environment,” Vicki said.

“Kittens get their immunity from their mother’s first milk,” I said. “He is well protected.”

“This is the guy I was telling you about,” Vicki said as she dug into the tangle of the towel for the kitten. “I looked at him, and he sure looks like a boy to me. But we decided we better get your take on things before we start celebrating.”

I took the kitten, turned him around in my hand, and lifted his tail to get a good look at his plumbing.

“He is definitely a male and calico to boot,” I said. “That is interesting.

“I know you have a simple explanation on how to tell the sex on these little guys, but could you explain it one more time, just so I know if I’m telling people the right stuff?” Vicki asked.

“The problem people have is the testicles are so small early in a kitten’s life,” I explained. “So what you want to do is just look at the openings. If the two openings are close together, it is a female, and if they are spaced a half centimeter or so, it is a male. Otherwise, time will tell you as they get older.”

“And how valuable is this guy?” Vicki asked.

“I was wondering what you were celebrating?” I said. “The sad truth is he is a curiosity, and that is about all. When I was practicing in Washington, a doctor with the state hospital in Buckley had a research colony of male calico cats. He would purchase those cats. I don’t know what he paid for them, but I know he lost his funding for that project the year I was there, and that colony went away.”

“So the high value is an old wives tale?” Vicki asked.

“As far as I know, he has no special value,” I said. “I guess you could advertise him, but I doubt if you are going to get any big offers.”

“We’re not sure we understand how this happens?” Vicki asked. “Why are they so rare?”

“In the cat, color is a sex-linked gene,” I said. “That means that it is on the X chromosome. Females have two X chromosomes, so they can be multi-colored. Males have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. If we are talking about yellow and black, males can be black or yellow, but not both in a mixture like on a calico cat. So to get a male calico cat, there has to be a non-disjunction, like we see with Down’s Syndrome. Only instead of the twenty-third chromosome, it is the X chromosome. Genetically, this little kitten is an XXY. In man, that makeup is called Klinefelter’s syndrome. But color is not sex-linked in man.”

“Is there anything we need to do with this guy?” Vicki asked.

“I think you want to neuter him when he is old enough,” I said. “Just treat him like a cat.”

“Is this XXY thing going to affect him later?” Vicki asked.

“Vicki, this is the first male calico I have seen,” I said. “I don’t have much of an experience base to draw a conclusion from. Other than a brief mention of the occurrence in school, it was never discussed. I am sure it was assumed that most of us would never see one.”

“So I guess we treat him like any other kitten,” Vicki said, looking at the old lady.

“And I thought I had a golden egg,” the older lady said.

Photo by Amy Larsen.

Today’s Note to My Readers

My next book is ready for purchase. This is book 5 of the Series – Memoirs of a Country Vet. 

Title: The Making of a Country Veterinarian

It has less veterinary medicine and more of my early life; childhood, school, early college, Army, more college, and vet school.

My books are available locally at Lillies and Lovelies, on Long Street in Sweet Home. Those books are autographed.

Autographed books can also be purchased from me by sending a request via email at d.e.larsen.dvm@peak.org.

It is available on Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/mwjx37mk.

Links to all of my books in the Memoirs of a Country Vet series can be on my home page: Doc’s Memoirs.

Making a Teaser Bull 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

The large animal surgery rotation in veterinary school with Dr. Annes was much more enjoyable than the rotation with Dr. Adams.

Dr. Annes had a varied mix of species and was a great instructor.

“Today, we have a young bull to make into a teaser bull,” Dr. Annes said. “What do you know about teaser bulls, Larsen?”

“Not much, other than they are used to mark cows in heat for herds using artificial insemination,” I said. “So to keep them from impregnating the cows, we do a vasectomy on them.”

“That is close,” Dr. Annes said. “And a vasectomy is adequate in a small closed herd situation. But in larger herds, especially with any range exposure, we have to be concerned about the transmission of trichomoniasis. Trich is become a serious problem in many areas today and destroys fertility rates.”

“How do you prevent the teaser from copulating with the cows being marked?” I asked.

“There have been several methods attempted,” Dr. Annes said. “The problem becomes, how do prevent copulation and still have the teaser maintain adequate libido to do his job? Some of the early procedures caused enough pain on erection that the bulls were quick to give up on the job.”

“What kind of pain are you talking about?” I asked.

The first attempt was very simple,” Dr. Annes explained. “The thinking was the bull was only needed for the herd to give all the cows one attempt at AI. So, after one heat cycle, twenty-one days, all the cows should have cycled and been bred with AI. Then they would be turned in with the herd bulls, and the teaser could be salvaged. With that thinking, they would pierce the prepuce,  place a bolt across it, thus preventing the erection from being extended out of the prepuce. It could be done cheaply, and it seemed to work. The problem was it was so painful for the bull that he was not functional for the full twenty-one days.”

“We are back to square one,” I said. “My guess would be to cut it off and do a low heifer on the bull.”

“That’s a thought and might be something that would work, but it might be a bit drastic, and it reduces the salvage value,” Dr. Annes said. “We tried a tie-down procedure where we would place a couple of sutures at the level of the retractor penile muscles to anchor the sigmoid flexure and prevent the penis from extending beyond the prepuce. That worked better than the bolt, but it reduced libido within a couple of weeks.”

“Did they try any other procedures?” Jim, the junior student, asked.

“Some veterinarians have tried to androgenize a cow,” Dr. Annes said. “By injecting her with enough testosterone, you can change her behavior enough so she will do a pretty good job of heat detection. Not as good as an active young bull, but satisfactory in many cases.”

“So if we are going to operate on this young bull today, you must have a new procedure that solves all those problems,” I said.

“Yes, today we are going move the preputial opening over to his side,” Dr. Annes said. “That way, we eliminate the pain issue and allow pretty normal penile function. It just is in the wrong direction and misses the mark.”

“It still will leave the bull feeling that he is missing out on something,” I said.

“Yes, but these are young bulls, and they continue to work at it pretty hard through a couple of cycles,” Dr. Annes said.

“I guess there is no reason to do a vasectomy then,” Jim said. 

“I still recommend doing a vasectomy,” Dr. Annes said. “For a couple of reasons. If a veterinarian is out in the field doing this procedure, there is always a possibility that the placement site might not be lateral enough. That will allow penetration. And, in at least one case, the bull figured things out, changed his point of attack, and accomplished penetration consistently. You understand, the reproduction system was made to work.”

After the discussion, we brought the young bull into the surgery area. We sedated him with a small dose of Rompun.

Positioning him on his back, the belly was prepped. Dr. Annes drew an arc on his belly, from the prepuce to the point on the side of his belly where we were going to place the orifice.

We made a circular incision around the preputial orifice. We extended it down the midline so we could free up the prepuce. Then we tunneled under the skin to the new site where we would place the orifice. We removed a patch of skin to match the size of the preputial orifice we were moving. We placed a sterile glove over the end of the prepuce and pulled it through the tunnel with a length of umbilical tape.

We sutured the end of the prepuce in place at its new site, closed the incision on the midline, and at the site where the prepuce had been located.

“Now for the vasectomy,” Dr. Annes said. “There are a couple of ways to accomplish this; one is the standard approach through the cord, and that is fine. But in the field, especially if time is an issue, you can just clip the tail of the epididymis on each testicle. That is a lot quicker and accomplishes the same function.”

With a small incision through the scrotum, we expressed the tail of the epididymis into the incision and made a nick in the tunic. A portion of the tail of the epididymis was expressed out of the tunic and snipped off. A couple of sutures, and we were done with that side. The same thing on the other side took even less time.

“Okay, that is all there is to it,” Dr. Annes said. “Let’s wake this guy up, and he is good to go to work.”

“Do they still salvage these guys after one season?” I asked.

“I am finding that this procedure leaves the bull functional for several years,” Dr. Annes said. “How long remains to be seen since I have only been doing this procedure for a few years. And I am told that some drugs on the horizon will synchronize estrus in a herd and make the need for a teaser bull a thing of the past.”

“Until then, I would guess this is the best procedure out there,” I said.

“Until then, time marches on, and this profession is always changing,” Dr. Annes said.

Photo by Bulat Khamitov on Pexels.