
The ticked tabby pattern produces hairs with distinct bands of color on them, breaking up the tabby patterning into a salt-and-pepper appearance. The legs and tail are more heavily barred and the pattern is variable with respect to the width of the bands. Mackerel is the most common tabby pattern.Ĭlassic (or 'blotched') tabbies have a similar 'M' pattern on the head, but the body markings are different, having a whirled and swirled pattern with wider stripes that make what are referred to as "butterfly" patterns on their shoulders, and usually a bullseye or oyster pattern on the flank. Mackerels are also called 'fishbone tabbies' probably because they are named after the mackerel fish.

Mackerels also feature a 'peppered' nose, where black spots appear along the pink tip of the nose. Often, an 'M' shape appears on the forehead. The stripes are narrow, and may be continuous or broken into bars and spots on the flanks and stomach. The mackerel tabby pattern has vertical, gently curving stripes on the side of the body. A number of other variations are due to the interaction between domestic cat and wildcat genes in breeds such as the Bengal and can now be seen in the Bombay. A fifth includes tabby as part of another basic color pattern, the "patched" tabby, which may be a calico or tortoiseshell cat with tabby patches (the latter is called a "torbie"). There are four tabby patterns that have been shown to be genetically distinct: mackerel, classic, spotted, and ticked. The race or breed of them are now almost lost." Tabby patterns He then claimed that "I doe well remember that the common English Catt, was white with some blewish piedness : sc, a blew. Some time after the mid - 17th century, the curious antiquary John Aubrey noted that William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury was "a great lover of Catts " and "was presented with some Cyprus-catts, i.e. However, one writer believed this to be untrue, at least in England.

Since the tabby pattern is a common wild type, it might be assumed that medieval cats were of tabby type. The French tabis "striped silk taffeta", "a rich, watered silk," from Middle French atabis (14c.), from Arabic 'attabiya, from 'Attabiy, a neighborhood of Baghdad where such cloth was first made, named for prince 'Attab of the Umayyad dynasty.
