Kinds of Tabby Cats

People often mistake tabby cats to be a cat breed. The term tabby denotes the dark, striped patterns on the coats of both domestic and wild cats. The tabby patterns are found in various cat breeds and they resemble the patterns on the ancient cats or the cat ancestors. These patterns may also be in the form of dots or whorls. These cats are characterized by the dark markings on the cheeks or face and patterns that resemble the wings of butterflies along their shoulders. They also have rings around the chest, tail and legs, and stripes on the sides.

  1. Mackerel Tabby

    • Mackerel is the most commonly found tabby pattern. As the name denotes, these patterns consist of stripes that resemble a mackerel or a fishbone. The mackerel patterns are characterized by vertical stripes seen on the cat's sides. The stripes found in this pattern are comparatively thin, whereas the classic tabby stripes on a cat are quite thick. Sometimes, the stripes may even be split into smaller bars or spots. The tails of these cats have rings on them and the legs have stripes that resemble bracelets.

    Spotted Tabby

    • The spotted tabby cats have large or small spots on them. The Egyptian Mau cat and the Ocicat are examples of spotted tabby. This pattern looks very different and distinct from the mackerel pattern and is actually broken stripes. Some of the other examples of spotted tabbies are silver spotted tabby, blue spotted tabby, brown spotted tabby and cream spotted tabby.

    Ticked Tabby

    • The ticked tabby pattern is also found on many cats. This pattern is also called Agouti. In this tabby pattern, every hair of the cat shows different bands of color. In some cats, these bands may occur evenly, in which case the entire coat appears to be ticked. The Abyssinian is an example of cat with an evenly ticked coat. The ticked tabby pattern looks almost like salt-and-pepper combination, and it looks very different from the tabby patterns with markings of stripes, whorls or spots. The ticked tabby sometimes includes ghost stripes over the face, stomach, legs, and the tail.

    Classic Tabby

    • The classic tabby pattern is also called blotched tabby. This pattern includes a number of swirls or whorls. The stripes in the classic pattern are wider than those found in the mackerel pattern. The classic tabby pattern is also characterized by butterfly patterns along the cat's shoulders. The pattern may sometimes include a bull's eye or an oyster pattern on the sides, made of encircled rings. The cat's legs and tail have stripes in the form of rings of varying thickness.