Talk:Calico cat/Archive 1

Toasted infobox about merging this article with Tortoiseshell
The conversation kinda died. Read on here. Thanks! 02:33, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Requested move
Calico cats → Calico cat — Use singular form per WP:PLURAL. --Bxj (talk) 03:38, 26 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Support per nom. This seems uncontroversial. Cnilep (talk) 09:04, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Support and agree this is uncontroversial. Suggest attempting a db-move. --Cyber cobra (talk) 01:35, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅. Jafeluv (talk) 07:09, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Discovery 1960 or 1961?
While moving a sentence about Mary Lyon's discovery from the "general genetics" section to the "discovery" section, I noticed that the later section mentions 1960 as the date Mary hypothesized X inactivation, while the former mentioned 1961 as the year of discovery. Does anybody know which it should be? I have no access to the referenced material for this information. — SkyLined (talk) 13:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Date of publication of her referenced article was 1961 (although she no doubt hypothesized about the concept much earlier). Changed text to 1961. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v190/n4773/abs/190372a0.html Liberato (talk) 10:14, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Female paragraph in genetics
So I've made an edit without noticing the following on the history page until after that fact:


 * Ramdrake (talk | contribs)‎ . . (10,224 bytes) (+708)‎ . . (Restored para about calicos almost always being female. If you disagree, pls take it to talk. Tx!)

However, I feel the removal of the para in question is still a good idea, as all of the info in it is already contained in the second paragraph of the Genetics section. The second paragraph is better fleshed out, and has links to other articles, etc. THe final para I deleted looks like a fragment from an older version of this section or something. So is there a reason it was duplicated, or is this just editorial overlooking on a previous editor's part?

Ramdrake - I am so sorry I didn't see your note before proceeding, but I still think the article is better without the redundancy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.143.110.155 (talk) 18:35, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Simply, because the fact that they are almost all females is importan, I feel ot should be mentioned in the lede as well, as it is now.--22:21, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Caliby
I added a pic of a caliby. I will try and take a better one since the one I uploaded is kind of dark. SharkD  Talk  20:33, 12 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Your new pic needs to reveal expansive areas of white such as an underbelly not just mittens otherwise it is more correctly a torbie. It really should also have more distinct calico patching to be labeled caliby. Probably better in the tortoiseshell section but that is up to you.  Less ambiguous was a different pic from someone else labeled calico cat in Malaysia which by no stretch of the imagination is a Calico or variant.  Removed. Liberato (talk) 18:34, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Maneki neko is calico?
I would like to see the basis for this statement, maneki figurines are nearly always in one colour, usually white, black or gold. Likely they are supposed to resemble Japanese bobcats, and many of these are calicos, but one of the (many) mythical origins for the manekineko was white. Southsailor (talk) 05:18, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

There's a small chance that we would get a very rare male calico tortoiseshell cat?
I think there is a small chance for a calico cat to be male, very rarely. I haven't seen any male calicos anywhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.68.33.84 (talk) 00:29, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The Klinefelter's syndrome reference in the Genetics section clearly explains this abberation. Liberato (talk) 19:36, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

We had a long haired male Calico when I was a teen. At the time, we were told it was impossible, but clearly they were just rare. Never tried to breed him or anything, and according to this article, probably wouldn't have amounted to anything anyway! :)74.194.78.21 (talk) 03:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Calico male cats are normally not possible "since the Y chromosome does not have any locus for the orange gene", so this happens only when a male cat has two X chromosomes (YXX) but then he is probably sterile. But it could be possible maybe to insert a orange gene on the Y chromosome using some of the brand new DNA-editing techniques (crispr)? and so create a line of true calico males. 194.174.73.33 (talk) 16:16, 21 March 2016 (UTC) Marco Pagliero Berlin

Needs a certain detail
How can one cause a calico tomcat, sterile or no, to be born? The article should say something on this.68.100.116.118 (talk) 23:59, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * You can't cause it. It is a rare and random mutation. It is mentioned in the Genetics section (Klinefelter syndrome). Liberato (talk) 05:45, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Personality Nonsense
The paragraph in the folklore section about personality traits ("calicos are unpredictable and orange tabbies are friendly") is not factual and the reference used does not even really show any such connection, unless the relationship has to do with simply the gender of the cat. But as the reference says: "...since there’s no large body of evidence on that, either, it’s just one of those things we cat lovers like to discuss when we're together." Either document the assertion more thoroughly or remove it. Liberato (talk) 05:25, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

I did a web search for cat color temperament and found only contradictory and opinion based conjecture. What does seem to be true is that people often have unfounded beliefs about the relationship between coat color and personality.

"Despite people’s perceptions that there are links between coat color and how a cat will behave, there is little hard evidence that such a connection is real."

Rather than an unfounded folklore approach, more interesting would be examining how the X chromosome inactivation which causes the random color patterning of a calico might also apply to other parts the cat such as its brain and nervous system. Could that maybe make a cat unpredictable?

I am removing the current paragraph since it is really the stuff of blogs and chatroom discussions, not a Wikipedia entry. Liberato (talk) 06:44, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Photography of dilute calico cat
I'm the contributor who added an illustration of a dilute calico coat. Is there a rationale about why the photograph was deleted? I thought it added to the article (since the text itself discusses dilute coats). leoboiko (talk) 12:33, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I thought there were too many images in comparison to the length of the article, particularly since all the images were kind of "bunched" together. You can add that specific photo back if you want. -- I dream of horses If you reply here, please ping me by adding to your message (talk to me) (My edits) @  05:21, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Why not use a gallery tag instead of removing the images? SharkD   Talk  21:06, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

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Calico vs tortie-and-white
Hey guise. I've been looking through articles in cat-fancy circles, and it seems that the accepted definitions in the serious cat fancy are that a calico vs a tortoiseshell isn't defined by the presence, absence, or amount of white. It's the pattern of the color that makes the difference. A tortoiseshell has a mottled, close-spaced pattern to the mix of red and black (hence the name, because the coat resembles the material tortoiseshell) and a calico has larger, distinct, clearly-defined splotches of red and black that resemble patchwork. However, a calico will basically always have some significant amount of white, because it is the white spotting gene which causes the orange and black to separate into large clear splotches instead of smaller mottles; but a tortoiseshell may also have some white, or none at all. As long as the red/black is patterned in the tortoiseshell pattern and not into large well-defined patches, it's a tortie-and-white, and not a calico. Is there any chance of updating the article to reflect this?

Let me clarify that yes, the more white a cat has, the higher the chance that its patches will be large and clear, because the white gene is what causes the sharp segregation of the colors. But again, that's only correlated to calico vs tortie, it's not the definition. The definition is the pattern that the colors take on.

Succubus MacAstaroth (talk) 02:20, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Suggested merger of Calico & Tortoiseshell cats
It would be a mistake to merge the two articles. Tortoisshell cats and Calico cats are NOT the same. Please see the notes and references on the page.

New victory77 (talk) 03:04, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

It is quite reasonable to have Calico and Tortiseshell be two subsections of a single article (although deciding what to name the article is not obvious). A benefit of such as merger would be to eliminate the multiple redundancies in the Genetics section. Joeinwap (talk) 14:17, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I think it is not appropriate to merge Tortoiseshell cat wiki entry with Calico cat wiki entry. Please pay attention to the difference between Tortoiseshell and Calico cats. Take note that they are not based on cat breeds, but they are based on colours. You can see that many cat breeds contain different colour patterns. See [] & [] Kimberry352 (talk) 16:18, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
 * A calico cat which is a white-based cat has many blotches of black & orange which does not mix. Black, orange and white are separated.
 * On the other hand, a tortoiseshell cat has black patches with red or orange mixed together.

In my region of the United States no distinction was made between "tortoiseshell" and "calico" cats. All cats with black/orange spotting were called "calico", whether they had a white base coat or not. So I wonder if the definition of calico given in the wiki is regionally biased. I don't see any reason not to merge the articles either. 90.157.234.124 (talk) 19:41, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Seconding the request for a citation on the claim that cats in North America are distinguished as either Tortoiseshell or Calico. I've not heard a cat described as tortoiseshell before and my understand has always been that any cat with three or more colors is simply Calico. 2600:6C56:7C08:691:0:1389:FD15:F60 (talk) 03:12, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Technically the calico is a type of tortoiseshell, it is a tortoiseshell with patching so it is a tricolor tortoiseshell with white patching or a calico. Genetically speaking however, tortoiseshell itself is technically a variety of tabby. So unless we want to combine the tabby, tortoiseshell, and calico pages, it may not be appropriate to combine the calico and tortoiseshell pages.

Tobi mi-ke (tranlation inacculate)
The general Japanese cat terms, mi-ke（三毛）; which means 'triple hairs', is the equivalent for 'calico'. The tobi mi-ke is one for the calico when she has an extremely wide white pattern and other two are very small on head and tail.

Psw (talk) 02:10, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Cats
Is there a cat called a night whispers calico? 208.114.93.87 (talk) 04:11, 29 December 2021 (UTC)


 * No. This just seems to be a fantasy card deck and/or book. Lindsey40186 (talk) 23:44, 28 May 2022 (UTC)