What’s a Tabby Cat??

“Hi - This is Willowe - Willowe with an “e”. I’m a tabby cat. My owner, Diana, had no idea what that meant, so I told her all about tabby cats. This is my story.”

I grew up hearing the term “Tabby cat” without ever knowing what people meant or what a tabby might look like. Later on I encountered the term “tabby” in connection with woven textiles. Tabby was a type of fabric. I adopted a cat from Felines and Friends in Santa Fe, NM. Her name is Willowe.

As applied to cats, “Tabby” describes a Tabby cat’s coat pattern of brown, gray, and black stripes, spots, and bands. All Tabbies have an “M" shaped mark on their foreheads. There are four tabby patterns: the mackerel, classic, ticked, and spotted tabby. The most common tabby pattern is “mackerel”.

Mackerel tabbies have striped rings around their tails and legs, and a V shape on their chests, with bands of solid or broken stripes running down the sides of their bodies. There are two lines of darker spots their tummies.

Willowe’s an example of a mackerel tabby cat, but she’s not just brown - there’s some silver hair in her coat, too.

The classic tabby, also known as blotched tabby, has the 'M' pattern on the forehead but, rather than primarily thin stripes or spots, the body markings are thick curving bands in whorls or a swirled pattern, with a distinctive mark on each side of the body resembling a bullseye.

According to Wikipedia, the ticked tabby pattern has a a salt-and-pepper appearance with almost no apparent stripes or bands. Residual ghost striping may be seen on the lower legs, face, and belly and sometimes at the tail tip. Of course, there’s the standard 'M' and a long dark line running along the spine. The spotted tabby is thought to be a genetic variation.

Tabby Cats

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