Ticked Tabbies and You

Mr. Man and I are firm believers that brown tabbies are the best cats (even though brown tabby is a color and not a breed and probably doesn’t really have anything to do with a cat’s “personality”).  And even though our kittens are brown tabbies, their coats are very different from our previous cats.

Every cat that I have had has been a brown tabby.  My childhood cat, Tailer, was a classic tabby with big swirly stripes on his sides.  Our precious Emma was a perfect Mackerel tabby, she had distinct, symmetrical stripes.  Clementine was a mackerel tabby with a Maine Coon style coat (she never got huge like a Maine Coon though).

Sally and Anabel both are not as distinctly striped as our previous cats. They have the classic tabby “M” on their foreheads and are clearly striped on their legs and head. As their coats are starting to come in the stripes on the sides of their bodies are developing, but if you look at them from the back, you don’t really notice their stripes at all.  What you notice more, especially on Anabel is more just salt-and-peppery speckles.

Because Mr. Man and I are obsessed with our sweet kittens we spend a lot of time examining their cuteness and researching various kitten things.  One evening, after an extensive conversation about their markings, I started researching.  It turns out there is something called a “ticked” or agouti tabby.  Ticked tabbies may not have a defined stripe pattern on their body, but each individual hair is striped.  Agouti refers to the gene variation that produces the banded hair pattern.  Our other cats would have a dark hair with a light tip or the other way around, but on Anabel and Sally their hairs have alternating light and dark bands all the way along (I tried to take a picture).  Ah ha!  We have ticked tabbies!  That is much nicer than thinking that we have poorly striped tabbies.

True ticked tabbies’ coats have a sandy appearance and no noticeable stripes at all.  Apparently, this is a common “color” on Abyssinians (which our kittens very clearly aren’t).  I also noticed that the squirrel that startled me when I was on my way to the laundry room earlier has a ticked coat. So apparently this genetic mutation is not exclusive to cats.  Just thought you’d like to know!