One genetic study of domestic cats found at least five founders. The tabby pattern occurs naturally and is connected both to the coat of the domestic cat's direct ancestor and to those of their close relatives: the African wildcat ( Felis lybica lybica), the European wildcat ( Felis silvestris) and the Asiatic wildcat ( Felis lybica ornata), all of which have similar coats, both by pattern and coloration. The tabby pattern is found in many official cat breeds and is a hallmark of the landrace extremely common among the general population of cats around the world.
"Tabby" is not a breed of cat, but a coat type seen in almost all genetic lines of domestic cats, regardless of breed. It is thought that the tabby pattern originates from the numerous related species of wildcat.Ī tabby cat, or simply tabby, is any domestic cat ( Felis catus) with a distinctive 'M'-shaped marking on its forehead stripes by its eyes and across its cheeks, along its back, and around its legs and tail and (differing by tabby type), characteristic striped, dotted, lined, flecked, banded, or swirled patterns on the body-neck, shoulders, sides, flanks, chest, and abdomen. Mackerel tabby, with the distinctive striped pattern and forehead 'M' A European wildcat ( Felis silvestris) bearing a similar coat pattern to that of a tabby cat. For other uses, see Tabby (disambiguation). However, if the cat inherits the color orange from its mother, the mother can be orange OR tortoiseshell."Tabby" redirects here. The very rare male tortie has two X chromosomes and one Y, and is invariably sterile.Īnother book, John Bradshaw's Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet, is also in agreement.Īlso note from this logic, for a cat to inherit the color orange from its father, the father must be orange. The combination of these two colours, with our without additional white patches, is found on female cats only.
Patches of orange fur and of dark fur occur side by side, and the cat is described as a tortoiseshell or 'tortie'. Instead of one gene being dominant and the other recessive, both genes contribute to the colour.
The remaining 42% of the female population have the orange gene on one X-chromosome and the non-orange gene on the other. Female cats with no orange gene on either X-chromosome form 70% of 70%, i.e. The fraction of such females is 30% of 30% which equals 9%. On female cats the equivalent orange coat occurs only when the non-orange gene is absent, which requires both X-chromosomes to carry the orange gene. Because male cats have only one X-chromosome, the occurrence of the orange gene in a large population equals the faction of male cats that have orange fur. Consequently, the orange colour is never uniformly dark but is always associated with some kind of pattern, although the contrast between the two shades of orange may be slight. The effect of the orange gene is to replace dark colours with orange and to suppress the action of any non-agouti gene. The presence of orange fur arose from a mutation of the non-orange gene on the X-chromosome into the orange gene. It's explained in more detail, with approximate percentages for the UK, in David Greene's book Light and Dark: An Exploration in Science, Nature, Art and Technology. A female cat must inherit the orange color from both her mother and father, and so that is statistically more rare (but not exceptionally so). Therefore, a male cat has to inherit the color orange only from his mother (his father's color does not matter). A male cat has 1 X-chromosome, while a female cat has 2 X-chromosomes. The color orange has to be present on all X-chromosomes that the cat has.
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