Calico Cats

Calico cats are easily recognizable, but did you know they aren't actually a specific cat breed? Calico is really just a color pattern that can be found across many different breeds of cats. Read on to learn other interesting facts about Calicos that you may not already know.

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Calico Cats Folklore

Calico cats have always been popular for their distinctive coloring, but did you know that they are also considered lucky by some cultures?

Japanese sailors often carried calico cats on board their vessels because they believed the cats would bring them protection at sea. These felines were also believed to bring good fortune to any home lucky enough to have one.

Whether or not you put any stock into the luck angle, these cats are still highly prized for their looks.

Color and Pattern

Calico cats are essentially tri-colored cats in basic shades of black, red and white. Each color has it's own separate patches, and the colors are never blended or mixed as they are in Tortoiseshell cats.

Sometimes the colors are diluted, and so a Calico may actually bare shades of blue, chocolate, cream, or fawn instead of the standard black and red on white.

Genetics

Calico cats are the result of a specific genetic code. Since genetics can be a bit difficult to follow, let's try to explain it as simply as possible focusing on the X chromosome.

The genetic code for color is contained in an X chromosome. Female cats receive an X chromosome from each parent, making them XX, while male cats receive an X chromosome from their mother and a Y chromosome from their father, making them XY.

Females

In Calicos, one X chromosome carries the red color, while the other X carries black. Whenever two X chromosomes are present, as in females, one will eventually become de-activated. The timing of the chromosome's shut off determines each Calico's pattern as well as which color will be predominant.

Because two X chromosomes are necessary to create those distinct color patches, you'll find nearly all Calico cats are female.

Males

Since most males only receive a single X chromosome, they do not carry the genetic coding to be Calicos, however, there are rare occasions when a male inherits two X chromosomes, making him XXY, and therefore able to present the Calico pattern and coloring. This rarity is basically a genetic anomaly, and for this reason the few male Calicos you'll find, perhaps one in three thousand, are nearly always sterile.

Breeding for Calicos

Since Calicos are such a popular color pattern, you'd think cat lovers would specifically breed for these beauties. In reality, this is not the case.

Breeding for Calicos is a bit of a gamble since there as yet is no way to prompt one of the X chromosomes to shut off at any given point in an embryo's development. However, with the current experimentations in genetic manipulation enabling scientists to produce a hypo-allergenic cat, you have to wonder if color manipulation is just around the corner?

Breeders can increase the chance of producing Calico kittens by using Calico females, or by breeding orange cats to black ones, but there is no guarantee that any of the kittens will have the desired color pattern.

Conclusion

For now, Calico cats remain a happy accident of genetics, so appreciate your patchwork kitty not only for its beauty, but for the unusual genetic sequence that was necessary to produce her.

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