To fill out the question, it is asking if tortoiseshell cats can have some white fur in addition to the usual black plus orange tabby and the answer is yes but in the United States they refer to tortoiseshell cats with some white fur as ‘calico cats’. In the UK the cat fancy has not adopted this terminology and instead describe tortoiseshell cats with some white fur as ‘tortoiseshell-and-white’ cats. This is describing a coat type not a breed of cat.
For most Americans the calico cat and the tortoiseshell (‘tortie’ for short) are one and the same but for some there is a difference and one such person is Dennis Kelsey-Wood who believes that only a tortoiseshell cat with white feet, legs, underside, chest and muzzle can be described as a calico! It would be as if the cat had stepped into a pail of milk.
In other words, a considerable amount of white. He is specifying that a tortie cat with less than the amount of white that he states can be called either a calico or a tortoiseshell-and-white. Some will say that there has to be a small amount of white or no white at all for the cat to be described as a tortoiseshell. As is evident, there’s a range of interpretations of the word ‘calico’.
It can be complicated and perhaps a little unnecessary as it we are quibbling about the name of a coat type. Perhaps the best thing to do is to call torties who have some white fur, “tortoiseshell-and-white cats”.
You’ll see variations on the standard particoloured coat (a coat of more than one colour including the tortoiseshell) made up of black plus orange tabby such as a diluted version in which the red becomes cream and the black becomes blue. There are many other variants.
Calico cats were first taken seriously a cat shows in the late 1950s.
