From a distance a tortoiseshell cat can look almost black. Up close, the coat comes alive: flecks of rust, ginger and toffee, scattered through the dark like embers. Some people call it messy. Others think it’s the most beautiful coat a cat can have.
Torties turn up at feeding spots all over the world. Here’s where their colours come from, and what’s true about the stories told about them.
In short
| What it is | Black and orange mixed together, with little or no white. |
|---|---|
| Boy or girl? | Almost always a girl. |
| Paler version | Grey and cream, called blue-cream. |
| With stripes | A torbie: tortie plus tabby. |
| Tortitude? | One owner survey found a small link. It’s far from proven. |
Tortie or calico?
A tortoiseshell, or tortie, has two colours, black and orange, spread unevenly over the body. A calico has the same two colours plus big patches of white. The white comes from a different gene, so the line between them is blurry. A tortie with a white chin and white socks is still usually called a tortie. Add more white and she becomes a calico.
The name comes from the shell of the hawksbill turtle, once used for combs and spectacle frames, which has the same mottled brown and amber look. In Japan, torties are called sabi-neko, rust cats.
Why torties are girls
The switch between orange fur and black fur sits on the X chromosome. A female has two X’s, so she can carry orange on one and black on the other. In each patch of skin, one X is switched off at random early on, and the fur grows whichever colour is left. A male usually has just one X, so he’s orange or black, not both.
Male torties do exist, usually because of an extra X, and they’re just as rare as male calicos. The whole story is in male calico cats, and the other side of it, why most gingers are boys, is in why ginger cats are male.
Brindled or patched
Because the switching-off happens by chance, every tortie is a one-off. Some have fine, brindled coats, where black and orange hairs are mixed so closely the cat looks rusty all over. Others have bold patches, like a map. A little white tends to make the patches bigger and cleaner, which is why calicos often look tidier than torties.
Look at the face. Some torties have a split blaze, orange on one side of the nose and black on the other, or a single orange stripe down the middle. Some have one orange foot and three black ones.
Blue-cream: the soft-focus tortie
A second gene, the dilute gene, can wash out both colours. Black turns grey, which breeders call blue, and orange turns cream. The result is a blue-cream, or dilute tortie: a cat in soft grey and peach, like a tortie seen through fog. They’re less common on the street, but they turn up. There’s more on how the dilute gene works in grey cats.
And when a tortie also carries tabby stripes, you get a torbie: the stripes show up in the dark patches, and the orange patches are striped too.
Is tortitude real?
Ask tortie owners and many will tell you their cat has attitude: bold, loud, opinionated. There’s even a word for it, tortitude.
The best-known study is a 2015 online survey by UC Davis vets, published in 2016. Owners of 1,274 cats answered questions about their cat’s colour and behaviour. Owners of torties, calicos and torbies reported a bit more hissing, swatting and biting towards people, and so did owners of black-and-white and grey-and-white cats. But the researchers called the differences “relatively minor”, and during handling and vet visits there was little difference between colours at all.
There’s a catch, too. Nobody watched the cats. It was owners describing their own pets, and people already expect torties to be prickly. In a 2012 study from Berkeley, people rated torties as more “intolerant” just from their colour, without meeting a single cat. So tortitude might be a little bit real, or it might be the story we tell. Either way, it’s no reason to pass over a tortie at a shelter.
Lucky cats
Torties carry plenty of folklore, though not all of it agrees. In Ireland they’re said to bring luck to the home. In the United States they’re sometimes called money cats. In Japan they were believed to protect ships from wrecks. In parts of England, though, a strange tortoiseshell walking into your house was once taken as a bad sign. The cats themselves don’t seem to mind either way.
Questions people ask
What’s the difference between a tortoiseshell and a calico?
White. Both have black and orange patches. A tortie has little or no white, while a calico has large white areas too.
Can a tortoiseshell cat be male?
Rarely. Most male torties have an extra X chromosome, and almost all of them can’t father kittens. You can’t tell by looking: only a vet check can.
Are tortoiseshell cats more aggressive?
Not by much, if at all. One owner survey found torties and calicos were reported as a little more feisty with people, but the differences were small and the cats were never observed directly.
Snap the torties on your street. Each patchwork is the only one of its kind.
