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Ok SpencerTheLion... http://PetoftheDay.com/talk/smile.gif since you seem to be so helpful this is just something that drives me crazy and I cannot figure out the answer.
What is the difference between a calico and a tortise shell?
I know that calicos are female....
I've only had two calicos-one I fostered only long enough for her to give birth and ween, so I never really got to know her before she went to a loving home across town - but I kept both her kittens, one a calico almost identical to her. Her peculiarity was knocking over glasses, which to her was even more fun if they had ice in them. She never lapped the water, or played with the cubes, she just wanted to knock it over. Even though she's been gone almost two years now, I am only just now getting back into the habit of pouring my coke into a glass. So determined was she, that once when my son was brushing his teeth, and pushing Yankee away from his rinse glass over and over, he impatiently put her on the toilet to divert her attention to something else. Well, it was diverted: he glanced at her, and saw her trying to knock the toilet over!
Her sister was a tortie point (I had only read about this color pattern, and have not seen it since Boosie passed - truly the most unusual of all patterns, I think) who frequently slept on top of the refrigerator, or in a basket that I had on top of the kitchen cabinets. Anytime she fled from something frightening (which in her poor spooked head was almost anything) she headed for the basket. But I always, for some reason I can't even remember, thought it was the Siamese part of her genetics that made her do this. Maybe it was the tortie/callie part.
PS - you were right, the tortoiseshell is called that because of the black with brown (or red) mottling - think of tortoiseshell spectacles or combs. The calico genetically is a tortoiseshell and white - learned this from a very detailed and esoteric book on cat genetics. There is also the "dilute" variety - blue instead of black and cream instead of red - supposedly pretty rare, but my mom has two.
Thanks!