# You can tell a lot by a cat's coloring.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-tell-a-lot-by-a-cats-coloring/143138>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 16, 2002, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-tell-a-lot-by-a-cats-coloring/143138 "2002-12-16T19:07:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-tell-a-lot-by-a-cats-coloring/143138/21 "2002-12-17T03:08:01Z")

</div>

Tabby refers to the striping, not the gender. The red-to-orange ones are called red tabbies, and the black-and-white-and-grey ones are silver tabbies. All real tabbies have an “M” striped on the forehead.

My current cat, Freckles, is a Humane Society graduate. He has some red tabby in him, but he has 4 white socks and a white chest. His stripes are broken up into spots, so he’s not a real tabby, even though he has the M on his forehead. His motto is, “Yeah, I can make that jump.”

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![syncrolecyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@syncrolecyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/syncrolecyne)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-tell-a-lot-by-a-cats-coloring/143138/22 "2002-12-17T05:22:36Z")

</div>

> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Bullwinkle \*  
> \*\*I’ve never known a black and white cat who wasn’t a paraniod schizophrenic. \*\*

I completely agree. Perhaps their coat gives them a very unbalanced view of the world?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Spit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/76d3ee/32.png) [@Spit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spit)\
**Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-tell-a-lot-by-a-cats-coloring/143138/23 "2002-12-17T07:37:23Z")

</div>

> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by pravnik \*  
> \*\*White cats with blue eyes are indeed deaf. My old cat Tink (a girlfriend got her in a breakup) is the sweetest cat who ever lived, and is deaf as a doorpost. \*\*

I see we are members of the same club:

I too, had a white cat with blue eyes named Adio, that a girlfriend got during the breakup. Still miss him.

At any rate, I don’t think he was completely deaf. He could hear me if I yelled at him loudly enough, or if it was a very high pitched noise. (I had a dog training tool that made a high pitched squeal when the dog did something bad, and he heard that)

Would this be normal, was the cat extremely rare, or could there have been another reason for his apparent “hearing”?

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-can-tell-a-lot-by-a-cats-coloring/143138.md?page=1)