Tabby cat

A 19th-century drawing of a tabby cat

The English term tabby originates from the translation of the French phrase "striped silk taffeta," the root of which is tabis, meaning "a rich watered silk." This can be further traced to the Middle French atabis (14th century), which stemmed from the Arabic term attabiya.[3] This word is a reference to the Attabiya district of Baghdad, noted for its striped cloth and silk;[4] Itself named after the Ummayad Governor of Mecca Attab ibn Asid such silk cloth became popular in the Muslim world and spread to England, where the word "tabby" became commonly used in the 17th and 18th centuries.[5] Tabby is also comparable to the Spanish word ataviar, which means "to decorate or to dress or wear" and often implies luxurious clothing.[6] Use of the term tabby cat for a cat with a striped coat began in the 1690s and was shortened to tabby in 1774. The notion that tabby is indicative of a female cat may be due to the feminine proper name Tabby as a shortened form of Tabitha.[7]

Prototypical tabby patterns in the head region: An 'M' on the forehead, bright eye rims and borders of the ears

The dark lines on a Mackerel tabby’s cheeks

A Seal lynx point showing the bullseye classic pattern

The Ticked tabby pattern is a trait of Abyssinians

Brown Spotted tabby pattern on an Ocicat

Domestic tabby/white cat

The four known distinct patterns, each having a sound genetic explanation, are the mackerel, classic, ticked and spotted tabby patterns.[1][8]

A fifth pattern is formed by any of the four basic patterns when part of a patched pattern—a patched tabby, then, is a calico or tortoiseshell cat with patches of tabby coat (such cats are called caliby and torbie, respectively, in cat fancy).[1]

All five patterns have been observed in random-bred populations. Several additional patterns are found in specific breeds and so are not as well known in general. For example, a modified classic tabby is found in the Sokoke breed. Some of these rarer patterns are due to the interaction of wild and domestic genes, as with the rosetted and marbled patterns found in the Bengal breed.

Tabby point on Mekong Bobtail

The four basic tabby patterns are due to two distinct gene loci (the agouti gene locus, with two alleles, and the tabby locus, with three alleles) and one modifier (spotted, with two alleles). The fifth pattern is an emergent one expressed by female cats with one black and one orange gene (one on each of their two X chromosomes) and is explained by Barr bodies and the genetics of sex-linked inheritance.

The agouti gene, with its two alleles, A and a,[11] controls whether or not the tabby pattern is expressed. The dominant A expresses the underlying tabby pattern, while the recessive non-agouti or "hypermelanistic" allele, a, does not. Solid-color (black or blue) cats have the aa combination, hiding the tabby pattern, although sometimes a suggestion of the underlying pattern can be seen ("ghost striping"). This underlying pattern, whether classic, mackerel, ticked or spotted, is most easily distinguishable under bright light in the early stages of kittenhood and in on the tail in adulthood.

However, the agouti gene primarily controls the production of black pigment, so a cat with an O allele for orange color will still express the tabby pattern. As a result, both red cats and the patches of red on tortoiseshell cats will always show tabby patterning, though sometimes the stripes are muted—especially in cream and blue/cream cats due to the pigment dilution.

The most common tabby pattern is mackerel and its T^m allele at the tabby gene locus is dominant over the classic (or blotched) allele, T^b. So a cat with a T^mT^m or T^mT^b genotype sets the basic pattern of thin stripes (mackerel tabby) that underlies the coat, while a T^bT^b cat will express a classic tabby coat pattern with thick bands and a ring or concentric stripes on its sides.

The ticked tabby pattern is a result of a different allele at the same gene locus as the mackerel and classic tabby patterns and this allele is dominant over the others. So a T^aT^a genotype as well as T^aT^m and T^aT^b genotypes will be ticked tabbies. The ticked tabby coat essentially masks any other tabby pattern, producing a non-patterned, or agouti tabby (much like the wild type agouti coat of many other mammals and the sable coat of dogs), with virtually no stripes or bars. If the ticked allele is present, no other tabby pattern will be expressed. The ticked allele actually shows incomplete dominance: cats homozygous for the ticked allele (T^aT^a) have less barring than cats heterozygous for the ticked allele (T^aT^m or T^aT^b).

The spotted gene is a separate locus theorized to be directly connected to the T^m allele; it 'breaks' the lines and thin stripes of a mackerel tabby, creating spots. The spotted gene has a dominant and a recessive allele as well, which means a spotted cat will have an Sp Sp or Sp sp genotype along with at least one T^m allele and at least one A allele at those alleles’ respective loci.

A European wildcat (F. s. silvestris) bearing a similar coat pattern to that of a tabby cat. It is thought that the tabby pattern originates from the numerous related species of wildcat.

Since the tabby pattern is a common wild type, it might be assumed that medieval cats were tabbies. However, one writer believed this to be untrue, at least in England. Sometime after the mid-17th century, the natural philosopher John Aubrey noted that William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury was "a great lover of Cats" and "was presented with some Cyprus-cats, i.e. our Tabby-Cats". He then claimed that "I doe [sic] well remember that the common English Catt, was white with some blueish piednesse (i.e. white with grey parts). The race or breed of them is now almost lost."[12] However, most drawings or paintings of cats in medieval manuscripts do show them to be tabbies.[13]

Well-known tabby cats include Think Think, one of two cats belonging to the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen.[14] One of the first mass-produced stuffed toys, the Ithaca Kitty, was inspired by a grey tabby cat with seven toes on each front foot.[15]

While no very famous real or fictional black tabbies have come along (aside perhaps from Abraham Lincoln’s cat Tabby) the blue mackerel tabby All Ball of the famous gorilla Koko is well known and several red tabbies have entertained people over the years: Heathcliff and Garfield from newspaper comic strips are both orange with black stripes, as is Bill The Cat from Bloom County; Azrael from The Smurfs is solid orange in the cartoons and, as red cats who appear solid are extremely rare, a red mackerel in the live action movie; Thomasina from Disney’s 1963 movie based on a 1957 novel about a cat who lives three lives is an orange mackerel tabby.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) once featured a gray or brown Tabby named Chessie as part of its Advertisement scheme. Chessie, and the slogan "Sleep Like a Kitten" was created in 1933 to market sleeper cars on the C&O's premier passenger trains. Three more Tabbies were added in 1937, Peake who was Chessie's "husband" and kittens Nip and Tuck. During World War 2, the C&O used Chessie and the Kittens to promote war bonds and the Home Front. In 1972, Chessie's silhouette would be used to create the logo for Chessie System, the successor to C&O. Even today, Chessie is still remembered as one of the most iconic mascots in railroading and marketing history.

The 1989 film The Adventures of Milo and Otis features an orange tabby named Milo, known as the titular character in its original 1986 Japanese version The Adventures of Chatran, portrayed by multiple animal actors.

• Brindle
• Calico cat
• Tortoiseshell cat