If you have a cat with tortoiseshell & calico coat markings, what coat markings would the mother & father have

Question

I'm just wondering what coat markings the mother and father could possibly have to produce a cat with tortoiseshell & calico coat markings. Could the mother be tortortoiseshell & calico, yet the father be one color? This gets confusing.

Let me clear something up: Not all calicos are female, but calico males are sterile.

I should have mentioned that the cat produced by the mother & father is a female. Sorry that I forgot that important fact.

Answer 1

Calico males are extremely rare and usually sterile, so the male cat will be anything but calico. The mother might be calico, or could be something else but carry the genes for those markings.

I had a female cat that had a Siamese father and calico mother. She had Siamese points made up of calico colors. Her brothers were all tabbies.

Answer 2

I am a bit confused. A tortoiseshell and a calico are usually not the same. In Britain, a calico is really a tortie and white. A tortoiseshell does not really have any white. Yes, mine has one white hair on her head but that does not make her a calico.

If the mother is not a calico, then the father is likely a red boy. But cats can have six kittens and six fathers, etc.

Answer 3

All calico cats, regardless of pattern, are female. If you have a calico male, he is sterile and usually don't live very long. Therefore, a calico cat would get it's markings from the mother, unless the father was a carrier of the calico gene.

Answer 4

Unless a pedigree, where the breeding is controlled, female cats will mate with several different males when they are in heat. Therefore a litter of kittens can have several fathers, resulting in various colour and coat patterns.

My previous cat was a long haired tortoiseshell and white. There were six kittens in the litter - 3 had long hair and 3 had short hair. The colour variations were; two tabbies, two tortoiseshell, one black and white and one pure grey.

Answer 5

It is very confusing. The basic principle is that the orange color is a recessive gene carried on the x chromosome. The kittens get an x from the mother and an x from the father so both parents need to pass that recessive gene on to their offspring.

Both mother and father can have almost any coat color and be a "carrier" of the orange coloration gene. It's when the two recessive genes come together that you get your calico and tortoiseshell cats.

In humans brown eye color is dominant over blue. Two human parents with brown eyes CAN have a blue-eyed child if both parents have a recessive gene for blue which meet up at conception. That's what happened with me as my mother had brown eyes and I have blue. My father had blue eyes.

Answer 6

Markings differ from cat to cat, as well as breed to breed.

I had a calico, whose mother was a Siamese. Lethal was so ugly, she was cute. lol We have no idea about the father, as the mother's owner said it was a stray cat that got her.

Lethal (yes, her name was Lethal Weapon, and no, I didn't name her, my husband did) had siblings in all color combinations. There was a Siamese, a gray tabby, a ginger striped tabby, a black one with a little white diamond on her chest (and she had the Siamese eyes and cry) and a gray striped tabby. Lethal also had the Siamese eyes, cry and head shape.

So, I guess it doesn't really matter what the parents look like. The kittens will come out looking different, and absolutely adorable. Even the ugly ones. lol

Answer 7

I believe that tortoiseshells are only females. So, she would pass on this trait to all of her offspring, but it would only be expressed in her female daughters. As for the calico, it could be passed to both male and female. So, in my opinion the only way to get a tortoiseshell and calico would be to have female offspring.

Answer 8

My tortie/calico came from a calico mom and a black dad. Her brother was a tabby/calico from the same mom but an orange and white dad.

Answer 9

Ive had two tortoiseshells. The mother of one was a tabby. I don't know what the dad was, They are beautiful cats, but you don't see many pictures of them in cat books. These cats don't like to be touched much, at least mine don't..good luck on your search for answers.

Answer 10

A tortoiseshell is black and orange. and calico is black white and orange; so to get a tortoiseshell and calico it could have been that they had a female offspring.