How to tell if your Kitten is a Boy or a Girl

Is my kitten a male or female? How to tell if your kitten is a boy or a girl?  That is such a common question and one I still have trouble with after nearly twenty years of breeding!

The easiest way to determine the sex of a kitten is by looking at their genitalia. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Hold your kitten gently and place them on a flat surface.

2. Lift the kitten's tail and look at the area around the anus.

3. In male kittens, the genital opening is located just below the anus and will look like a small round dot. You may also be able to see the kitten's testicles, which will look like two small bumps on either side of the genital opening. However, these may not be visible until the kitten is a few months old.

4. In female kittens, the genital opening is located slightly further down the tail and is shaped like a vertical slit. The distance between the anus and the genital opening is typically shorter in females than in males. 

A really good tip for cat breeders is that the kittens are easy to identify as male or female when they are first born.  There are birthing hormones that are in the queen that are passed to the kittens prior to birth.  This can make the testicles in males especially easy to see in the first few days after birth.  Then they disappear till the kitten is older.  

It also helps to have kittens to compare at the same time.  If you don't have this, a quick google search will find you side by side boy and girl kitten photos to use as a reference.

Bonus Tip:  Torties (mix of red or cream and another colour) will be female.  Its to do with where the red is in their genes.  Yes, you can get male torties but they are super rare and caused by an extra chromosome or a merging of two embryos.