We used to have a Maine Coon once. Orange too, just like yours. We got her from a pet store for $50. We didn't know she was a Maine Coon until I compared her with pictures online. Almost $1k for a kitten sounds like a tad too much IMHO but I'm a New Zealander so I'm not sure what the situation is like in the States.
That quote seems to be from Wikipedia. I had a look at it as well as the article for tortoiseshell cat and here is what I found:
Because genetic determination of some coat colors in cats is linked to the X chromosome, calicoes are nearly always female. Because of the genetics involved, calico males are rare, and generally have impaired vitality and are almost always sterile.
Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_catTortoiseshell describes a coat coloring found almost exclusively in female cats, so called because of the similarity to the tortoiseshell material. Also called Torties for short, these cats combine two colors other than white, either closely mixed or in large patches. The colors are often described as red and black, but "red" can instead be orange, yellow, or cream and "black" can instead be chocolate, grey, tabby, or blue. A tortoiseshell cat with the tabby pattern as one of its colors is a Torbie.
"Tortoiseshell" is typically reserved for cats with relatively small or no white markings. Those that are largely white with tortoiseshell patches are described as tricolor, tortoiseshell-and-white (in the United Kingdom), or calico (in Canada and the United States). Tortoiseshell markings appear in many different breeds as well as in non-purebred domestic cats. This pattern is especially preferred in the Japanese Bobtail breed...
...A male cat, like males of other therian mammals, has only one X and one Y chromosome (XY). That X chromosome does not undergo X-inactivation, and coat color is determined by which allele is present on the X. Accordingly the cat's coat will be either entirely orange or non-orange. Very rarely (approximately 1 in 3,000) a male tortoiseshell or calico is born. These animals typically have an extra X chromosome (XXY), a condition known in humans as Klinefelter syndrome, and undergo an inactivation process like that in females. As in humans, these cats often are sterile because of the imbalance in sex chromosomes. Some male calico or tortoiseshell cats may be chimeras, which result from the fusion in early development of two embryos with different color genotypes. Others are mosaics, in which the XXY condition arises after conception and the cat is a mixture of cells with different numbers of X chromosomes.
Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortoiseshell_cat
