The background colour is an agouti pattern, meaning that each individual hair has several bands of colour along its length. Dorsal striping in tabbies is very variable and in this instance has combined with the low-contrast Siamese pattern to give an even more distinctive appearance.īoth the mackerel tabby and the classic tabby have stripes and bars on the legs and tail and the classic 'M' (or fleur-de-lys) marking on the forehead and the belly is usually spotted. In some lines of old type Siamese, there is less contrast between body and points, allowing the underlying pattern to show through (in spite of the low contrast and aqua-blue eyes, Hunter does not have Tonkinese ancestry). All of these have dorsal stripes similar to Hunter. Urban Hunter has been mated to a red-point Thai called Kasia Ruda, resulting in one male and four female kittens. The mackerel pattern is dominant to the classic pattern, but it's the classic pattern that became established early on at cat shows because the bolder, thicker markings were more eye-catching, especially on a silver background.Īndrea and Beata Brunetti, in Italy, have a pedigree Thai (the European name for the less extreme, traditional or old style of Siamese cat) called Urban Hunter with a visible blotched tabby pattern and an interesting dorsal stripe as shown above. Viewed from above, the classic tabby pattern resembles butterfly wings, giving it the nickname 'Butterfly Tabby' - a term better known in grandmother's day than in the modern day. Sometimes the markings are extremely broad and fuse together, especially on the back and flanks. In the 'classic tabby' (blotched tabby) there are broad bands, whorls and spirals of dark colour on a paler background usually with a 'bulls eye' (or 'oyster') pattern on the flank. In the mackerel tabby, the vertical stripes are thin like fishbones and may break up into bars or vertically aligned spots. These two patterns are common in random-breeding pet and feral populations. The two most common tabby patterns are 'mackerel tabby' and 'classic tabby' (blotched tabby, oyster tabby). So as well as the cat fancy definitions, I've covered as many variations as I can and there are no doubt many more out there! Nature isn't so restricted in its patterns and there are numerous variations found in random-bred cats and emerging breeds (particuarly those with hybrid ancestry) that aren't recognised by the cat fancy. For example the 'marbled tabby' seen in Bengals is a variation on the 'classic tabby'. The cat fancy recognises four basic types of tabby (ticked, mackerel, classic, spotted) with breed-specific variations on each of these types. When sold in England, this silk was called atabi or - by those who misheard - taffety. Their name was said to have been derived from a street in Baghdad celebrated for the manufacture of its watered or moire silks. In the early days of cat exhibitions, tabbies were divided into banded and spotted. These are two examples of tabby, or striped, cat. For most people, two of the most familiar 'types' of cat are the 'blotched tabby' and the 'ginger tom' (or 'marmalade cat').

Types of tabby cats