Saturday, 12 November 2016

Cats

 The village of Villanovilla in the Garcipollera valley has been almost entirely rebuilt. I think it was abandoned in the 50s with the forestation programme. It now consists of a handful of rather attractive stone-built houses, well-made streets and at least one rather scabby yard, as you can see below.
 The cats surprised me. In this photo you can just about see four ginger ones and a ginger and white one. I saw at least one more ginger puss elsewhere, as well. Is this common?http://www.jaca.com/villanovilla.htm This link will show some of the houses.
A note about ginger cats:
 The ‘ginger gene’ which produces the orange colour is on the X chromosome. Females have two X chromosomes and so need two copies of this gene to become ginger, whereas males need only one. This means there are roughly three males to one female ginger cats. Ginger toms father tortoiseshell or ginger females. If both parents are ginger, then all their kittens will be ginger too.