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A calico cat is a domestic cat of any breed with a tri-color coat. The calico cat is most commonly thought of as being 25% to 75% white with large orange and black patches; however, they may have other colors in their patterns. Calico cats are almost exclusively female except under rare genetic conditions.
A calico cat is not to be confused with a tortoiseshell, which has a black undercoat and a mostly mottled coat of black/red or blue/cream with relatively few to no white markings. However, outside of North America, the calico pattern is more commonly called tortoiseshell and white.Sayer, Angela 1996. Encyclopedia of the Cat. London: Chancellor Press, p219. Such cats with diluted coloration (blue tortoiseshell and white) have been called calimanco or clouded tiger. Occasionally, the tri-color calico coloration is combined with a tabby patterning, called tortoiseshell tabby with white. A calico-patched tabby cat may be referred to as caliby. Cat Colors FAQ: Common Colors - Torties, Patched Tabbies and Calicos :
Derived from a colorful printed calico fabric, when the term "calico" is applied to cats, it refers only to a color pattern of the fur, not to a cat breed or any reference to any other traits, such as their eyes.Robinson, Richard. "Mosaicism". Genetics. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003. 76-80. Formal standards set by professional and show animal breeders limit the breeds among which they permit registration of cats with calico coloration; those breeds are the Manx cat, American Shorthair, Maine Coon, British Shorthair, Persian cat, Arabian Mau, Japanese Bobtail, Exotic Shorthair, Siberian cat, Turkish Van, Turkish Angora, and the Norwegian Forest cat.
Because the genetic determination of coat colors in calico cats is linked to the X chromosome, such cats are almost always female, with one color linked to the maternal X chromosome and a second color linked to the paternal X chromosome. The majority of the time, males are only one color as they have only one X chromosome. Male calico cats have an extra X chromosome (XXY, known as Klinefelter syndrome in humans) or are genetic chimeras with two different sets of DNA (XX and XY).
Some calico cats, called "dilute", may be lighter in color overall. Dilutes are distinguished by having grey (known as blue), cream, and gold colors instead of the typical colors along with the white.
The calico has been Maryland's state cat since 1 October 2001. Calico cats were chosen as the state cat because their white, black, and orange coloring is in harmony with the coloring of the Baltimore oriole (the state bird) and the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly (the state insect).
Serious study of calico cats apparently began in 1948 when Murray Barr and his graduate student E. G. Bertram noticed dark, drumstick-shaped masses inside the nuclei of nerve cells of female cats, but not in male cats. These dark masses became known as Barr body.Travis, John. "Silence of the Xs". Science News. 158 (6): 92–94. 5 August 2000. In 1959, Japanese cell biologist Susumu Ohno determined the Barr bodies were . In 1961, Mary Lyon proposed the concept of X-inactivation: when one of the two X chromosomes inside a female mammal shuts off. She observed this in the coat color patterns of mice.Gilbert, Scott F. "Transcriptional Regulation of an Entire Chromosome: Dosage Compensation." Developmental Biology, Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates, 2000. There are two different alleles in calico cats, one received from each parent, that can determine their fur coloration: each allele is responsible for either orange or black fur. Typically, each allele received would create a solid coat of black and orange fur, but with calico cats X-inactivation occurs at random, which makes for the very distinct fur coat. Calico cats are almost always female because the locus of the gene for the orange/non-orange coloring is on the X chromosome. In the absence of other influences, such as color inhibition that causes white fur, the present in those orange loci determine whether the fur is orange or not. Female cats, like all female Placentalia, normally have two X chromosomes. In contrast, male placental mammals, including chromosomally stable male cats, have one X and one Y chromosome.Gunter, Chris. "She Moves in Mysterious Ways". Nature 17 March 2005. Since the Y chromosome does not have any locus for the orange gene, it is not possible for a normal XY male cat to have both orange and non-orange genes together, which is what typically results in tortoiseshell or calico coloring. One rare genetic exception resulting in a male calico occurs when faulty cell division leaves an extra X chromosome in one of the that produced the male cat. That extra X then is reproduced in each of his cells, a condition referred to as XXY, or Klinefelter syndrome. Such a combination of chromosomes could produce tortoiseshell or calico markings in the affected male, in the same way as XX chromosomes produce them in the female. All but approximately one in ten thousand of the rare calico or tortoiseshell male cats are sterile because of the chromosome abnormality, and breeders reject any exceptions for stud purposes because they generally are of poor physical quality and fertility. Even in the rare cases where a male calico is healthy and fertile, most cat registries will not accept them as show animals.
As Sue Hubble stated in her book Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes,
The mutation that gives male cats a ginger-colored coat and females ginger, tortoiseshell, or calico coats produced a particularly telling map. The orange mutant gene is found only on the X, or female, chromosome. As with humans, female cats have paired sex chromosomes, XX, and male cats have XY sex chromosomes. The female cat, therefore, can have the orange mutant gene on one X chromosome and the gene for a black coat on the other. The piebald gene is on a different chromosome. If expressed, this gene codes for white, or no color, and is dominant over the alleles that code for a certain color ( i.e. orange or black), making the white spots on calico cats. If that is the case, those several genes will be expressed in a blotchy coat of the tortoiseshell or calico kind. But the male, with his single X chromosome, has only one of that particular coat-color gene: he can be not-ginger or he can be ginger (although some can add a bit of white here and there), but unless he has a chromosomal abnormality he cannot be a calico cat.
Currently, it has been very difficult to reproduce the fur patterns of calico cats by cloning. This is shown in the case of CC, whose genetic donor, Rainbow, was a calico domestic longhair. Copy Cat and Rainbow had different fur patterns.
The study of calico cats may have provided significant findings relating to physiological differences between female and male mammals.Pearson-White, Sonia. " Mammalian Genetics: X/imprinting ". The University of Virginia. 2004. Accessed 23 May 2010.
On August 31, 2021, Google launched a role-playing browser game called Doodle Champion Island Games. The player character is a calico cat named Lucky.
Folklore
Cats with calico coloration are believed to bring luck in the folklore of many cultures. The German word for a cat with calico coloring is "Glückskatze", meaning "lucky cat". In the United States, such cats are sometimes referred to as money cats. In Japan, Maneki-neko figures depict calico cats, bringing good luck. Japanese sailors often kept a calico as their ship's cat to protect against misfortune at sea.
Literature
In the late nineteenth century, Eugene Field published "The Duel", a poem for children also known as "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat".
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