graywolf wrote: > Had to look up that Silver Tabby stuff. Interesting. When did they start > calling a tiger striped cat a mackerel tabby?
Hmmm. I'm certainly no expert, but I always thought that the "Tabby" part described the tiger "strip-ed-ness" and the word before "Tabby" described the coloration. So, the cat Ann posted, and one of my tabbies, are both "silver": light and dark gray stripes, sometimes with a hint of green hiding in there. My other "male", however, is a "Red Tabby" or "Orange Tabby". His fur is striped in dark orange-brown and a light orange that's almost ginger. I'm not sure exactly what coloration would be "mackerel". My other two are "females", and they're "Tortoiseshell Calicos". The Calico refers to the monotone patches of distinct colors (as opposed to stripes, etc.). A "Tortoiseshell" calico has a lot of small patches and sprinkles all run together, usually with a dark base. A "regular" calico (may have a more "correct" name), has larger, obvious and distinct patches. And that's about the extent of my knowledge of cat coloration, excepting the "points" that Siamese and related breeds sometimes develop. In general, it seems like cats have undergone less common "directed" breeding than dogs, at least among the general population. There is the CFA (AKA for cats, pretty much) and shows and stuff, but that seems to be the minority of the cat population in my experience. For example, except for a few breeds, most cats you run into on a daily basis just seem to be "alley cats" or "moggies" or "Heinz 57" or whatever (the result of cat-directed breeding rather than human-directed breeding). And there don't seem to be as many people looking for specific breeds ... most seem to just want a "kitty". > So I guess there was > something fishy about the gray alley cat* we had when I was a kid. Guess > you have to be a cat enthusiast to know the names of all those different > color combinations. Well, up above I pretty much exhausted my knowledge of cat coloration. :-) What was "fishy" about your alley cat? What sort of coloration? -- Thanks, DougF (KG4LMZ) -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
