Calico Cats

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 typically 25% to 75% white with large orange and black patches (or sometimes cream and grey patches, which is called a muted calico); however, calico cats can have three other colors in its pattern. They are almost exclusively female except under rare genetic conditions.

A calico is not to be confused with a tortoiseshell, which has a mostly mottled coat of black/orange or grey/cream with relatively few to no white markings. However, outside North America, the calico pattern is more commonly called ''tortoiseshell and white''. In the province of Quebec, Canada, they are sometimes called ''chatte d'Espagne'' (French for '(female) cat of Spain'). Other names include ''brindle'', ''tricolor cat'', ''mikeneko'' (三毛猫) (Japanese for 'triple fur cat'), ''samsaek goyangi'' (삼색 고양이) (Korean for 'three colored cat') and ''lapjeskat'' (Dutch for 'patches cat'); calicoes with diluted coloration have been called ''calimanco'' or ''clouded tiger''. Occasionally, the tri-color calico coloration is combined with a tabby patterning; this calico-patched tabby is called a ''caliby''.

"Calico" refers only to a color pattern on the fur, from colorful printed Calico fabric, not to a cat breed or any reference to any other traits, such as its eyes.Robinson, Richard. "Mosaicism". ''Genetics''. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003. 76-80. Among the breeds whose formal standards allow calico coloration are the Manx cat, American Shorthair, Maine Coon, British Shorthair, Persian cat, Arabian Mau, Japanese Bobtail, Exotic Shorthair, Siberian, Turkish Van, Turkish Angora and Norwegian Forest cat.

Because the genetic determination of coat colors in calico cats is linked to the X chromosome, calicoes are nearly always female, with one color linked to the maternal X chromosome and a second color linked to the paternal X chromosome. In most cases, males are only one color (for instance, black) as they have only one X chromosome. Male calicoes can happen when a male cat has two X chromosomes ( Klinefelter syndrome, with XXY sex chromosomes and generally sterile); is a chimera, with two different cell types; or, rarely, when some skin cells of the developing kitten spontaneously mutate.

Some calico cats can also be overall lighter in color—''dilute calicoes''. Fairly common among calicoes, dilutes are distinguished by having grey (known as blue), cream and gold colors instead of the traditional black, red and brown patches along with their white.

History

The coat pattern of calico cats does not define any breed, but occurs incidentally in cats that express a range of color patterns; accordingly, the effect has no definitive historical background. However, the existence of patches in calico cats was traced to a certain degree by Neil Todd in a study determining the migration of domesticated cats along trade routes in Europe and Northern Africa. The proportion of cats having the orange mutant gene found in calicoes was traced to the port cities along the Mediterranean in Greece, France, Spain and Italy, originating from Egypt.Hubbell, Sue. ''Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. 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 resembles the coloring of the Baltimore oriole (the state bird) and the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly (the state insect).

Etymology

The fabric called " calico" was originally from the city of Calicut in southwestern India.''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (2008)
"calico"
Printed calico was imported into the United States from Lancashire in the 1780s, and here a linguistic separation occurred. While Europe maintained the word calico for the fabric, in the States it was used to refer to the printed design. These colorful, small-patterned printed fabrics gave rise to the use of the word calico to describe a cat coat color; "calico" as an adjective being synonymous to "mottled" or "resembling printed calico".

Genetics

In genetic terms, calico cats are tortoiseshells in every way, except the tortoiseshell has a black undercoat and the calico has a white undercoat. However, there is one anomaly: as a rule of thumb the larger the areas of white, the fewer and larger the patches of ginger and dark or tabby coat. In contrast, a non-white-spotted tortoiseshell usually has small patches of color or even something like a salt-and-pepper sprinkling. This reflects the genetic effects on relative speeds of migration of melanocytes and X-inactivation in the embryo.Robinson, Roy. ''Genetics for Cat Breeders and Veterinarians'', Butterworth-Heinemann Medical, 1991.

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 bodies.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 X chromosomes. In 1961, Mary Lyon proposed the concept of X-inactivation: one of the two X chromosomes inside a female mammal shuts off. She observed this in the coat color patterns in mice. There are 2 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 would be received create a solid coat of black and orange fur, but, with Calico cats, Lyonization: commonly known as 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 alleles present in those orange loci determine whether the fur is orange or not. Female cats, like all female placental mammals, 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 exception resulting in a male calico is when faulty cell division leaves an extra X chromosome in one of the gametes 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 male, in the same way as XX chromosomes produce them in the female.

All but about one in three 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 modifier genes can add a bit of white here and there), but unless he has a chromosomal abnormality he cannot be a calico cat.

It is currently very difficult to reproduce the fur patterns of calico cats by cloning. Penelope Tsernoglou wrote "This is due to an effect called x-linked inactivation which involves the random inactivation of one of the X chromosomes. Since all female mammals have two X chromosomes, one might wonder if this phenomenon could have a more widespread impact on cloning in the future."

Calico cats may have already provided findings relating to physiological differences between male and female mammals.

Folklore

Cats of this coloration are believed to bring good luck in the folklore of many cultures. In Germany, the word for a cat with calico coloring is "Glückskatze" or "lucky cat". In the United States, these are sometimes referred to as ''money cats''. In the late nineteenth century, Eugene Field published " The Duel", a poem for children also known as "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat". In Japan, Maneki-neko figures depict calico cats, bringing good luck; Japanese sailors often had a calico ship's cat to protect against misfortune at sea.

See also

* Bicolor cat
* Brindle
* Cat coat genetics
* Deaf white cat
* Maltese cat
* Point coloration
* Tabby cat
* Tortoiseshell cat

References

External links

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{{Domestic cat

Cat coat types
Symbols of Maryland