That can’t be true, can it? Of the nine orange cats I’ve ever had, six were female, and three male.
My Desmond is a classic tabby. He’s also very silly. I’ve never heard of the word tabby being restricted to female cats.
Female cat? Huh. Never heard that one - wonder if it is a regionalism.
I think it is more like 1 in 5 are female. I had one as well. Possibly that proportion of 1 in 400 comes from conflation with the scarcity of male calicos, that really are pretty rare ( I’ve actually heard ~1 in 3000 for them, but I’m not sure I’d trust that number either )… But there seems to be a bit of mythology floating around about both, including the mistaken belief that one or the other is valuable because of their rarity ( they aren’t, except to their owners of course ).
Tabbies are striped domestic cats, about 12-14 pounds. Most are red/orange and white or black/gray and white.
Whether the stripes are sharp or muted, two markings are always there; on the forehead, the stripes form an “M”, and the tail is clearly striped.
In ethnic slang, the female version of an Uncle Tom is Aunt Tabby.
Someone needs to tell Buffy that, then. She’s huge. (Probably because she steals everyones’ food)
Spectre, see post 10.
(I’ll take some pictures of Gippy later-I have one of her wearing my Terrible Towel)
elfkin477, what’s what the lady told us when we got her. Who knows? I did hear that Oranges are supposed to be more intelligent. THAT I can believe. (Buffy’s pretty smart-that’s probably why she got into so much trouble when she was little-she climbed into the Xmas tree, for one)
Statistically :D.
I think that what is arrived at by averaging all the females in large feral colonies ( in France ). Anecdotally mine was tiny, but I’m sure the variation is pretty broad. Most of those long-haired breeds tend to be larger in general, so maybe her being orange is the only thing keeping Buffy from topping 20 pounds ;).
I’ve always thought of tabbies as striped or marbled cats (though never associated the word with female cats in particular).
Turns out I was wrong, though–apparently, tabbies are cats with a ground color that’s got some other color on top of it (pattern irrelevant). Singapuras (like my Tenshi) are described on their official papers as “sable tipped tabbies.” I think the tabby “M” is a characteristic too.
In common use, though, I think of a tabby as a striped or marbled cat of any color (though to me, the brown/gray cats with black stripes are the quintessential “tabby”). 
I like tortoiseshell cats, and given a choice, I would pick a tortie out of a litter or the shelter when getting a new cat.
I think it’s analogous to liking Blond Surfer Dudes. I’m still a heterosexual woman, and like most men. I just like Blond Surfer Dudes better than the other kinds. Nothing wrong with Skinny Dark-Haired Guys, just not my type.
I think we all have our favorites, just like we all have a type of members of our preferred sex that we find more attractive than others.
He’s so CUTE! I love kitties with huge ears…
A common swirled/striped/spotted house cat? I used to have a orange-ish tabby (‘round my hometown in Texas referrred to as a "yella’ cat") that was the fattest, laziest, sweetest old boy you could ever hope to meet.
SIMPLY PRECIOUS!! Thanks so much for sharing! 
the new group i have are tabbys. my old group was black and tuxedo.
stretch the superduper is a tabby point siamese. his tabby stripping is in the classic design and shows up darkest where the siamese points are. he is a silver tabby mixed with chocolate siamese. his colouring ranges from siamese cream to black and his eyes are a light crystal blue. he is gorgeous!
koritsa the klimber is an orange mackerel tabby. the very unusual girl, she has a tiny bit of white on her chin, and is a very petite girl. she is under 7 lbs.
lager the loveydovey is mostly white with orange bits here and there, what ever is orange has stripping, his tail is entirely orange stripped and looks like it belongs to a completely different cat.
no pics on line, as i use disposable cameras to take pictures of them.
All orange cats are tabbies? Would you say that this cat was a tabby? He has the M on his forehead, and a few rings around the end of his tail, but aside from that, you really can’t see stripes on his body. It’s my cat Maceo, btw.
Yes, and a fine-looking fellow he is. Your post may not have been aimed at me; I didn’t quite say all orange cats are tabbies. Maceo looks to have some tabby in his family tree. Most cat breeding in this country is done by chance, not by pedigree. It’s an accident when the purely tabby marking shows up.
My cat Freckles is more clearly red tabby, though his stripes are muted and broken into spots. He also has four white socks and a white chest, but his magnificent auburn coat marks him as a tabby.
I’ll post a link to a pic soon, if I can remember how.:smack:
I’d say so. The pattern can be obscured or faint, but you can see that it is there. It can be a bit of a continuum - troub’s orange cat is very stripey, whereas mine is more intermediate and yours would represent the other extreme. But genetically they should all be tabbys, as the O gene always ( far as I’ve ever read ) overrides a non-tabby genotype. But there are other confounding factors - the pale color of your cat possibly indicates that another factor, the dilution gene, is at play, washing out all the colors and perhaps making the pattern more obscure.
At that apparently cat color genes still haven’t been completely mapped out, so who knows what exactly is going on ;)? But I think that “M” qualifies it as tabby, genetics aside.
And by “it”, I meant “him.” Sorry 'bout that :).
Let us not forget the buff tabby (the cat, not the Doper).
Here’s a pairof tabby brothers. The buff one was adopted by a friend of mine and is now a fat and sassy house cat. I think his bro stayed at the horse barn and became a fat and sassy mouser.
Striped cat, most likely orangey brown in color.
You mean to say, “My cat’s name is Maceo”? Really? That’s awesome.
I have two great tabby cats. We got her to match him, as in “There’s a litter of barn cats? I’ll take the striped girl one to match our stripey boy.”
The could not be more different. He’s golden with golden eyes. She’s black and brindle with green eyes. He’s big and lean, she’s small and pudgy. She’s a classic and he’s a mackerel. He turns to spots on his flanks, she doesn’t. He’s friendly and outgoing and follows me everywhere! She is shyer and reserved and hangs out in the bed all day. He wants nothing more than to go outside, she abhors the very concept of cold and wet and outside. They even eat different cat food and different treats. She sleeps on the foot of the bed, all demure. He’s in between the pillows, very undignified! But they love each other very much and are great pals for each other.
I’ve got a female marmalade tabby (one of two female orange tabbies in that litter), who is very fat and not too smart. I’ve also got a female regular tabby, who is tiny and wiry and smart as a whip. I recently lost my hard drive but it’s in the freezer now and if I can get any data off it tomorrow I’ll post a picture of the two of them snuggling.
Oh, and sorry, to me, “tabby” refers to the stripeyness, not to the gender at all.