National Tabby Day was first celebrated on April 30, 2016, by the Mayor’s Alliance for N.Y.C.’s Animals, Bideawee, and Triumph Books. It’s to celebrate the tabby cats themselves and inform people that tabbies are not a breed of cat but a coat pattern. The first event featured a cat adoption and book signing to benefit Bideawee and a shelter for cats and dogs. The book was “Making the Most of All Nine Lives: The Extraordinary Life of Buffy the Cat” by author and pet lifestyle expert Sandy Robins and oral surgeon and photojournalist Paul Smulson.
A tabby cat is not a cat breed. It is a coat pattern in almost all domestic cats. The tabby pattern is related to the tabbies’ close relatives, such as the African wildcat, Asiatic wildcat, and European wildcat. The distinct appearance of the tabby cats is the M-shaped marking on their forehead. The tabbies have four coat patterns, and those have a variant: the orange tabby. The orange tabby cats have a stereotype of being lazier than other cats. In fact, most orange tabbies are male, and they tend to have an adventurous personality.
The four tabby coat patterns are classic tabby with swirling patterns; mackerel tabby with narrow tiger-striped patterns; spotted tabby with large or small spots; and ticked tabby with tabby markings on the face and agouti hairs on the body, with few to no stripes. It is said that tabby cats tend to be friendly and nonaggressive. And, among all the types of tabbies, the orange tabbies tend to be the most affectionate. This conclusion is based on three different things, such as everyday handling, interactions with humans, and veterinary visits.
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