Argh! I've been adopted by a very cute stray kitty, but i know nothing about cats....i've been a dog person all my life. one friend thinks it's a SHE, about 4-5 months old; and another friend thinks it's a HE, about 8 months old. I will get him/her/it spayed/neutered in another week (once i'm fairly certain it's not just lost), but it's driving me crazy calling it she/he....

i did a websearch for "sex cats animals" and got a really nasty result. so how do you tell a cat's sex? there's definitely no penis, but rather a little spade-shaped protrusion that looks like a vagina to me, and testicles to my friend. it's about 1 1/2 inches from the anus. help! anybody?

-- Anonymous, April 04, 2001

Answers

just getting my question on the new answer board.

shameless. s.

-- Anonymous, April 04, 2001

Don't feel bad; one of the reasons Rudy is named Rudy is that it was a gender-neutral name (thank you, Bill Cosby) and I wasn't quite sure. I was *pretty* sure he was a boy, and then someone told me he was a girl, so I called him "she" for months until he got lost. The person who found him didn't answer my ads because they said he was a female.

Anyway. Enough about my stupidity and my cat's brief flirtation with transgenderism.

The only way to tell with very young kittens, I think, is that the two, um, openings, or bumps, or whatever, are further apart with one sex than with the other. I think the boys are further apart. (Boy kitties don't get visible testicles until they're pretty old.) But I guess this isn't much help unless you have two to compare, huh?

I just did a net search. Boy, you're right about the porn. I did find this on another message board:

. (:)boy (|)girl

That's a little TMI.

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2001

hi susana. if you put "sexing kittens" as your search criteria, you'll find what you're looking for without the porn ... i'm not sure "sexing" is a word used in porn sites, but any query with "sex" in it is sure to bring you sites you wouldn't show your mother.

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2001

This should help ;)

-- Anonymous, April 07, 2001

the cat's color might also be a clue, because certain color patterns are sex-linked. for example, orange tabbies (without white) are predominantly male; calicos and tortoiseshells are almost invariably female.

what color is your kitten?

-- Anonymous, April 07, 2001

Best of luck - I am sure my previous vet is still laughing about my insistence on getting my cats spayed, 10 years ago. Yes, they are both male. Yes, I sexed them according to a diagram. Yes, the whole waiting room was laughing. Yes, I was pretty embarrassed.

-- Anonymous, April 07, 2001

George started out as Joy until my roommate called me at work one day to say, and I quote, "Joy has balls!" (maybe it was funnier when she said it - she'd been insisting "she" was too aggressive to be a "she.")

I've heard that even people skilled at such tasks have a hard time making the determination when the cat is still a kitty. I don't know if that's true, but it made me feel better.

-- Anonymous, April 08, 2001

If you have a chance to look at a male and a female Siamese cat, you'll be able to tell the difference. We have two Siamese mixes, one male and one female, and because male Siamese cats have points (dark bits of fur) not only on their nose and feet, but also on their (ahem) scrotum, you can immediately see which is the boy. Even from across the room, in bad light. Anyway, since we got them, I've known precisely what to look for, and I haven't guessed wrong on other cats since.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2001

what about nipples? since males don' t have to feed kittens, do they have them at all, or fewer than females? sorry if this sounds terribly stupid, but I've only ever had female cats, so I wouldn't know for sure.

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2001

I did an entry on my journal last summer titled "I hate that fucking cat" about a kitty I had rescued as a stray who ... well, I won't go into details. Anyway, it's sort of scary that I get so many hits to my site by people looking for "cat fucking pics".

Gross.

I don't know what's scarier, that or the large amount of traffic I get from searches for "Hitler."

-- Anonymous, April 11, 2001

Woo hoo!! Tiger is a boy! I took him in today to be neutered/spayed, and they confirmed that 1) he is a boy, and 2)he's already been neutered. What a relief. We got two vaccinations just to be safe, and they showed me his tiny little penis that comes out of what i thought was a vulva. go figure. thanks for the tips, but i was still unable to tell for sure....They also guessed he was about 8-10 months, so i'm going with nine....i've fabricated/guessed his birthday based on that and the day he wandered into my apt.....so he'll be "1" on July 5.

and i continue to be amazed at how cute a cat can be. this one doesn't seem to mind driving in my truck (perches behind my neck); plays nicely with children (1 1/2 and 6 yrs old) and a chihuahua, and has only vomited once so far....

thanks again, folks....
s.

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2001

Congrats on your new kitty! I've had similar problems. We had a whole lotta stray cats suddenly last summer (long story). Michael went in to get neutered and we were told he was a she. I have the same problems with "telling" but s/he was so much bigger than the other females in the litter that I was sure s/he was male. Then, when they did the operation they said she was already spayed, which was impossible, and estimated her age to be a year older than she was. We decided she was something of an "it." My mom now has her and calls her Michael Sue.

-Kat

-- Anonymous, April 14, 2001