The scientists, whose research was crowdfunded by a whole crew of cat lovers, hope that their work could help us find out whether orange cats are at an increased risk of some health conditions, too.

WASHINGTON — Cat lovers know when kitties groom, their tongues are pretty scratchy. Using high-tech scans and some other tricks, scientists are learning how those sandpapery tongues help cats ...

Two teams of scientists at Kyushu University in Japan and Stanford University in California determined that orange cats' color all comes down to a missing segment of their genetic code.

Except, Kaelin and colleagues discovered, in pumpkin-colored cats. "Arghap36 is not expressed in mouse pigment cells, in human pigment cells or in cat pigment cells from non-orange cats," Kaelin said.