Animal charity in US discovers rare intersex tortoiseshell kitten

Staff at an animal welfare charity in the United States were stunned when they discovered that a kitten they had initially thought was female was in fact a rare intersex tortoiseshell cat.

“It was like spotting a unicorn!” clinic manager Bailey Shelton of the Humane Society of Central Oregon (HSCO) said in a Facebook post on June 7.

Tortoiseshell cats, which have striking swirls of black and shades of orange, are typically female.

HSCO said the feline arrived at its shelter weighing just 450g and was sent to a foster home, where it was named Cindi based on its coat colour and external genitalia.

Her foster family described her as “a typical loving, adventuresome and playful kitten”.

Cindi was returned to HSCO for spaying five weeks later, and that was when veterinarians discovered that it did not have a uterus or ovaries.

Instead, the vets found two testicles, which they surgically removed, and the cat was renamed Cinder.

“To call it a male is tough, but with the binary nature of animals and people’s perception of animals, we chose male,” said the charity’s medical director, Dr Crystal Bloodworth.

She said in the Facebook post that the decision was made based on the fact that the gonads, or sex hormone-producing organs, are male.

The veterinarians also determined that Cinder had “feline disorder of sexual development”, also known as hermaphrodite, because it had both testicles and a vulva, a female reproductive organ.

Dr Bloodworth, who has performed “tens of thousands of cat surgeries” in her shelter medicine career, said she has seen only one other male calico and only a handful of true hermaphrodite animals.

Mr Shelton added: “Even though I’ve only been in the veterinary field for nine years, this very well could be a once-in-a-career moment. They always talked about how rare male tortoiseshells are back in school, but seeing one in person is something else.”