Tabby

Tabby is a pattern, not a breed. Every tabby has darker markings on a lighter background and an M-shaped mark on the forehead, plus pencil lines on the cheeks and rings or bars on the legs and tail. It can appear in nearly any colour, such as brown, grey, orange, cream or silver.

There are four main patterns. Mackerel tabbies have narrow vertical stripes like fish bones. Classic, or blotched, tabbies have wide swirls on the sides. Spotted tabbies have broken stripes that look like spots. Ticked tabbies, like the Abyssinian, have banded hairs and few or no stripes on the body, which is covered under ticked coat.

The tabby pattern is believed to be the wild-type coat that helps a cat blend into vegetation, and it is the most common pattern in free-roaming and household cats. Orange cats are almost always tabby underneath. Because tabby shows up in so many breeds, it is a poor guide to a cat's personality. Orange males are more common than orange females because of the way the orange gene is carried, which is discussed under tortoiseshell.