Tabby cat

A 19th-century drawing of a tabby cat

The English term tabby originally referred to "striped silk taffeta," from the French word tabis, meaning "a rich watered silk." This can be further traced to the Middle French atabis (14th century), which stemmed from the Arabic term عتابية / ʿattābiyya.[3] This word is a reference to the Attabiya district of Baghdad, noted for its striped cloth and silk;[4] itself named after the Umayyad 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 indicates a female cat may be due to the feminine proper name Tabby as a nickname of "Tabitha".[7]

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

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

A fifth pattern is formed by any of the four basic patterns when part of a patched pattern—a patched tabby 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. For example, a modified classic tabby is found in the Sokoke breed. Some of these rarer patterns are because of the interaction of wild and domestic genes, as with the rosette and marbled patterns found in the Bengal breed.

The coat of a cat can be very important. In recent studies, the color and pattern of a cat could impact how long the cat would have to wait to be adopted. The lighter the color, the faster the cat would be adopted. An orange tabby cat would likely be adopted before a classic tabby.[9]

Mackerel (striped) tabby

The mackerel, or striped, tabby pattern is made up of thin vertical, gently curving stripes on the sides of the body. These stripes can be continuous or broken into bars and short segments/spots, especially on the flanks and stomach. Three or five vertical lines in an 'M' shape almost always appear on the forehead, along with dark lines from the corners of the eyes, one or more crossing each cheek, and of course many stripes and lines at various angles on the neck and shoulder area, on the flanks, and around the legs and tail, marks which are more or less perpendicular to the length of the body part. Mackerel tabbies are also called 'fishbone tabbies,' probably doubly named after the mackerel fish.[10] Mackerels are the most common among tabbies.[1]

The dark lines on a Mackerel tabby's cheek

Two distinct gene loci, the agouti gene locus (two alleles) and the tabby locus (three alleles), and one modifier, spotted (two alleles), cause the four basic tabby patterns. The fifth pattern is emergent, being expressed by female cats with one black and one orange gene 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,[16] controls whether or not the tabby pattern is expressed. The dominant A expresses the underlying tabby pattern, while the recessive non-agouti or "hyper-melanistic" 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 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.

An orange tabby cat with genetics for pigment dilution, resulting in a cream phenotype

The mackerel pattern 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.

Personality and aggression varies widely from cat to cat, and is multifactorial.[17] A 2015 study from University of California, Davis sought to examine the relationship between coat color and behavior in cats.[18] Researchers ran statistical analyses from 1,274 online surveys completed by cat owners. The owners were asked to rank the cats' aggressiveness during interactions with human aggression, handling aggression, and veterinary aggression. The study concluded that, though aggressive behaviors did show up in different levels between different coats, these were relatively minor.[19] The larger differences in aggression seemed to researchers to be sex-linked, rather than related to any coat pattern or coloring:

With all coat colors combined, females were identified by their guardians as more aggressive during veterinary visits compared with males (X² = 10.36, p = .001). Analyses showed that gray-and-white and black/brown/gray tabby females were more aggressive than their male counterparts at veterinarians’ offices (X² = 9.28, p = .002, and X² = 5.00, p = .025, respectively).[20]

A similar study also reported no evidence of a link between a cat's behavior and their coat pattern; however, it suggested that any differences were just how they were being perceived, i.e. people perceive orange cats as "friendly" and white cats as "shy," and then look for confirmation of these perceptions.[21]

A European wildcat (Felis 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."[22] However, most drawings or paintings of cats in medieval manuscripts do show them to be tabbies.[23] In the first century BCE, Cicero references the distinctive "M" marking of the tabby cat in De consulatu suo. [24]

Due to the pattern being expressed by both pure and mixed-breed cats, a large number of famous cats fall into the "tabby" category. A few of the most notable examples include:

Orangey and Audrey Hepburn on the set of Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961

• Think Think - one of two cats belonging to the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen.[25]
• The Ithaca Kitty - a grey tabby cat with seven toes on each front foot that inspired one of the first mass-produced stuffed toys.[26]
• Morris the Cat - an orange tabby who began appearing as an advertising mascot for 9Lives cat food in 1969. Morris became an iconic television character in the following decades, and was even featured in mock campaigns as a 'cat-didate' for President of the United States in 1988, 1992, and 2012.[27] Morris has been played by 3 cats since 1968, all rescued from shelters.[28] Because of this, Morris and his handlers advocate for shelter adoption, mainly on his social media platforms.[29][30]

• Maru - a tabby from Japan, and one of the most popular cats in the age of the internet. He once held the Guinness World Record for the most-watched animal on YouTube.[31]
• Orangey - an orange tabby who starred in a number of movie and televisions roles. His most notable role was that of Cat in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's, for which he won his second PATSY Award. He is the only cat to win twice, his first win coming in 1951 for Rhubarb.[32]

• Brindle
• Calico cat
• Tortoiseshell cat