Calico vs. black-and-white

Brenda Watkins wrote:

tortoiseshell is a mixture of colors - in Emily's case, golden brown, grey,
black and cream - whereas calico is patches of white, black and orange. As
far as I know, tuxedo is black and white only. Can anyone else help
explain?

A tortie's (tortoiseshells) colors are more blended together, not as
distinct. A calico's colors have larger patches of the distinct colors -
a patch of orange here, and some black there. And as others have said,
calicos have white, but torties don't.

I think a tuxedo cat is traditionally a black and white, but I've heard
people say stuff like "tuxedo tabby", meaning mostly striped, but white
underneath, on the paws, etc, ie, stripes where the black would be in a
black-and-white tuxedo. Works for me - I think of Roxy as a tuxedo tabby.
See: http://home.sonic.net/~jwermont/cats/cats.html . Scroll down about
halfway to the Roxy pictures, and you'll see what I mean.

Joyce

My "torti's" are mainly black, with orange, grey and gold kind of mixed
in, if that makes sense to you. There is a pic of my Bon Bon on my cat
stories page in Flippy's collection -- you can see what a real torti
looks like!

Renee






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