LOL, Gandle. Yes, he knows how, but Spook has a different take on the situation. There is something about an orange cat. They're the feline equivalent of a redhead, or something. I'm especially smitten with marmalade tabbies. I inherited my dear mother's marmalade tabby boy when Mama passed away, and there's never a dull moment.

I am sure you could eat a salad and do gymnastics. I could. I just couldn't tell you what condition I'd be in afterward.

If he is showing you his belly he trust you and it wont be long before you have a new buddy-cat.
Anyone who knows me knows i have an obsession with orange cats esp orange boy cats and esp orange boy cats with pointy faces and big ears.
I couldnt live without 1 or 2 or 3......

Suzy, I think you're right about orange cats. We have two - Duke who is inside & Ralph who is outside. Both seem to play the role of goat in the cat pecking order.

We have an Orange/White tabby boy and he's is the sweetest cat I have ever met. He's staying just far enough away to show you that he is comfortable being around you but hasn't been accepted by Spook. Soon though after they've established who's dominate (probably Spook because it's his yard after all) you'll both have a new friend for life. :)

According to statistics I read somewhere and also according to my vet, orange male cats are the best-natured of any kind of cat. Orange cats are usually male, so I don't about orange females. My own beautiful long-haired orange kitty, Watson, was the most charming klutz one could imagine. I still miss his quizzical "you talkin' to me?" look when he was being especially obtuse.

Pidge that's interesting about orange cats, but come to think about it, the three orange cats we've had have all been male. And they've pretty much been mild-mannered klutz's too. Duke was one of the kittens that was born at our house in Dallas right before we moved here. He would have nursed forever if mom had let him, but finally when he was about 9 months old & tried to cozy up to her one more time, she just whacked the living snot out of him.

I'm also especially fond of male marmalaids. I've owned 3 in my lifetime.

Psycho - Well, the name explains it. He was far from mild-manered, but I loved him.

K.C. Farnsworth - He was a lazy spoiled brat, but fairly mild manered. He was my baby when I was growing up. I got him the day that Psycho died. I was 10 and wanted to "replace" the kitty that had just died. Well, we had K.C. until I was in my first semester of college. We had to put him down. He had seizures for about 5 years and they just kept getting worse and worse and he was getting weaker and weaker. :-(

Then, a few months after I moved out on my own, my mom called one night and said, "Your daddy wanted me to call you and tell you that you need to come and get this kitten that Mrs. Cooper (old neighbor lady) found in her yard." And the rest is history. The Dude is now around 11 years old, and totally an old grump. He's lived with my parents for about the past 8.5 years, as Keith is allergic to cats. So, he's a block away and lives with his "uncles" Stanley (HUGE black and white fatty), Henry (HUGE gray tabby fatty) and The Beast (young, annoying brat) LOL The Dude hates them all, except Stanley. Stanley is "special" and so The Dude tolerates him.

Opie is definately an exception to the rule..hes such an excitable boy....and i have the scars to prove it.

I believe that most marmalade tabbies are male, just like it's very unusual to find a tortie unless they are female. But, that being said, my mother did have a female marmalade tabby some years ago. You would never, ever have guessed she was a female unless you inspected the plumbing, however. She was large, aggressive, and had that distinctively square male nose. She was a hellion and a bully to the other cats, but endeared herself blatantly to humans. She knew where the saucer of morning milk came from!

My huge orange fuzz ball is male, rules the roost, has never learned good claw manners (which is why we had to remove what was left of the wallpaper in the bedroom and paint.) He greets me at the door, he talks to me, he sleeps with me under the covers. Taking him to the vet is Not Fun. You cannot hold him, but he is always by my side. The big older male tuxedo copies everything he does. The 19 year old male ignores him. The 3 females hate him and he torments them to pieces.

A long-haired marmalade boy was the only male cat of all the barn cat kittens who stayed around...he was in love with my half-dwarf male rabbit Daisy(I was told he was a girl when i got him, i didn't check!!) who thought he was a feline...he was forever humping the female cats, to the point that they ran from him, though they could have easily had him for dinner.

Anywho, daisy-boy and the marmalade (he never aquired another name, somehow) would lay together and knead each other, take turns humping, were constantly snuggled together. When Daisy died suddenly from an eye infection, i found Marmalade two mornings later dead in the road...none of our other cats ever got hit, even though we lived on a busy highway, Phoebe the matriarch calico taught all her descendents to stay out of the road with snarls and smacks.

I too, had a marmalade tom who was gentle as can be. Riley was so named for the Irish red hair and the "life of Riley" that he led. His momma birthed him somewhere and then carried him up onto the roof to keep him safe from the neighbor's marauding dogs. Momma was killed in the road shortly after he was born, and I was the one who fed him, taught him how to use the litterbox, everything. He was so gentle that a friend of DH, playing with him in the front yard, asked if he had been declawed! Not me, not ever! Sadly, he met his end at about ten years old..I suspect by the paper delivery person, as we found him looking as if he were asleep, at the end of our driveway.

My mom always said that ginger toms were the sweetest tempered of all cats. I could argue, because of some of the same color and gender are constantly wandering through the yard and raising havoc! But then, they aren't my cats.

Oh boy, do we have a new friend. Mr. Orange juice, marmalade etc. has decided he really likes our yard and he will rub our ankles. Think he belongs to the people down the block, still shows no interest in Spook's food dish but seems to want company, much to Spook's disgust. She swears in cattish at him everytime he comes close to us. If I have him placed correctly, their yard is nothing but a carefully mowed green lawn while ours has shrubs and bushes, flower beds and gardens he likes to lurk and sleep under. He talks to us contantly and actually seems to want to make friends with Spook, fat chance of that happening.