Oriental Tabbies - TABBY PATTERNS and COLOURS

For many of us, the term "tabby" brings to mind a striped alley cat named "Tiger"!! "Tabby" actually refers to the pattern of a cat, and is less about the stripes on the cat than about the bands of colour that may appear on each individual hair on the cat.

If you look closely at the lighter colored hairs on a patterned cat, you will see a mottled or even a freckled appearance.

These hairs are called agouti - like wild rabbit hair. They have dark and light bands all down the length. When you look at the hairs in the darker areas of the pattern, this speckling is absent. The hairs are all one dark colour.

All cats have a gene which switches this speckling on or off - the agouti gene. Off and we have all solid hairs and a non-agouti or self cat. On and we have a tabby cat. The tabby gene then says what pattern the tabby will be.

TICKED TABBY: Abyssinians, Somalis and Orientals are the only commonly found cats with ticked patterns. The ticked tabby is covered with individually banded hairs - each hair is light and dark in bands. The coat of a ticked tabby appears to be covered in two tone glitter.

This caramel ticked boy is Gr Pr Jadevyn Tate owned by Vicky Scothern.

MACKEREL TABBY: The mackerel tabby is covered with thin stripes and rings, which reminded someone of the striped pattern of mackerel fish. This is the cat with the familiar tiger cat coat pattern.

This beautiful chocolate boy is bred by Edith de Geest of the Ravenscar cattery.

CLASSIC TABBY: The classic pattern has wide bands of dark color forming large rosettes or bull's-eyes on the cat's sides, and also a common marking known as a "butterfly" across the shoulders. The pattern is dramatic and very popular - especially in silvers. Sometimes you will hear this pattern referred to as "Blotched".

This beautiful chocolate boy is bred by Cathrieke Brandt of the Celeborn cattery.

SPOTTED TABBY: Instead of stripes or blotches, a spotted tabby is covered in spots of darker colour on a paler background. This is the leopard of the tabby family!

This beautiful blue silver spotted tabby is bred by the Ajaijin cattery.

And a kaleidoscope of colours to choose from!

You can pick and mix from the following for the main colour

dark colours dilute colours metallic colours

You get a second colour for free (the paler tabby colour)

- ranging from golden honey to palest gold

OR you can have all the above main colours with silver instead of the honey / gold
(the SILVER tabbies)

NOW

pick a pattern from
Ticked Mackerel Spotted Classic (blotched)

(you can have any pattern in any colour, with or without silver!!)

AND FINALLY

If you go for a girlie, you can have a mix of a colour from the top 3 rows mixed with its red equivalent on the bottom row, in any of the 4 patterns, with or without silver - a tortoishell tabby ("torbie") or a silver torbie.

Have you made your choice?

Now all you have to do is find someone breeding what you want and wait!!