In times past, “tabby” could refer to any house cat, though this name was more often used to refer to a female (as in “toms and tabbies”). Later it came to mean a cat whose coat showed bands, or stripes, of a darker color than the base color. Strictly speaking, there is no cat breed named “tabby,” but, as you will see in the following entries, the word tabby is used among cat fanciers to refer to several types of coat patterns.
