Which color is best for a tabby cat?

My friend Tricia asked me to share my opinion on tabby cats recently, so I figured I should get that done before too long. In particular, she wanted to know which color tabby I thought was best. First I had to do some research on tabbies. I'd heard about them, and seen them, but I didn't really know what made a tabby a tabby.

So I learned that tabbies aren't a breed of cats. Instead they are a category that ignores color or breed. Basically, if you have a cat with stripes or dots or swirls, you're looking at a tabby cat. (Tabbies also typically have an M pattern on their faces.)

So how does color factor into this? It doesn't really change the way tabbies are defined, so it is really just a matter of preference. I've personally always been a fan of black cats, but how would you know that you had a black tabby? The patterns would fade into the black.

There are also several difference patterns that are recognized with tabbies-mackeral, classic, spotted, and ticked. Mackerals have vertical stripes. Look for whirled patterns or bullseyes on Classic tabbies. Spotted tabbies have spots obviously, and Ticked tabbies have a 'sale-and-pepper' appearance.

Now that I've babbled about information for a while, let me just say that orange tabbies are the best. They are the color I typically associate with tabbies, so that makes a big difference in my opinion. However, I also like the idea of orange cats. They may not be as cool as black cats, but they are still cute.



My friend's kitten, Jayne