No, ‘calico’ is American terminology meaning a tortoiseshell-and-white domestic cat. This means a cat with some white fur mixed in with tortoiseshell fur. These cats can be purebred, pedigree cats or random bred cats.
There will be varying amounts of white and sometimes the colors are faint (diluted) but all are described as calico cats.
Tortoiseshell cats can be dark in colour (black torties) or lighter and sometimes faint (muted). All are tortoiseshell cats. Once again cats with this sort of fur can be purebred, pedigree cats or random bred cats (moggies).
I won’t go over these two types of cat coats in detail here because there are already two pages (and more – use custom search) on them:
Some cat owners believe that cats with tortoiseshell coats have distinct characters (‘Tortitude’ meaning feisty).
