A Case of Gender Confusion

My father has been feeding two cats from the nearby road for some time now. They are pretty animals - white, with just a few black markings on their foreheads. Every evening, he picks them up, brings them into a house and puts them in the cage so that they can be fed without interference from the other cats. Then, after they have eaten, he releases them.

Anyway, preliminary assessment was that they were both males. We had (as usual) been making preparations for sterilising the two cats and the plan was to familiarise them to human contact, and then hopefully find them an adopter. In the interim, I called them whiteboy1 and whiteboy2 (no more intimate names as these would lead to greater feeling of involvement and ownership). We had taken the larger of the two for sterilisation but my father felt that the smaller one could wait a little.

Such was the state of affairs when my father and I were walking home Sunday evening and saw Paddy, our big male cat lying on top of some white fur. Now we had neutered Paddy so that, in itself was surprising. It was even more surprising, when we approached a little nearer to Paddy, and found that he was lying on top of whiteboy2!!!

Well, Paddy's behaviour was not inexplicable. After all, we did neuter him a little late in the day (we were prioritising females, younger males first). As for whiteboy2 - the simplest explanations are often likely to be the most accurate. Looks as though whiteboy2 is really whitegirl, on heat.