This last was even a finer animal than Aaron, being very beautiful in colour and very large in size but he, alas! like many others, was caught in wires set by poachers, and was found dead. There were two he-cats in the litter, one the dark-brown tabby just mentioned, which I named Aaron, and the other, a very fine red tabby, Moses. The picture illustrating these notes is from one so bred, and is a particularly handsome specimen. This is simply the ordinary tabby, and not the brown tabby proper.Īs I stated in my notes on the Tortoiseshell cat, the best parents to obtain a good brown tabby from is to have a strongly marked, not too broad-banded tabby he-cat and a tortoiseshell she-cat with little black, or red tabby she-cat, the produce being, when tabby, generally of a rich brown, or sometimes what is termed black tabby, and also red tabby. What are generally shown as brown tabbies are not sufficiently orange-brown, 'but mostly of a dark, brownish-gray. A cat of this description is now somewhat rare. Tail long, and gradually tapering towards the point feet round, with black claws, and black pads yellowish-white around the black lips and brown whiskers are allowable, but orange-tinted are far preferable, and pure white should disqualify. The nose should be deep red, bordered with black the eyes an orange colour, slightly diffused with green in form the head should not be large, nor too wide, being rather longer than broad, so as not to give too round or clumsy an appearance ears not large nor small, but of moderate size, and of good form legs medium length, rather long than short, so as not to lose grace of action body long, narrow, and deep towards the fore part. The clearer, redder, and brighter the brown the better. The banded tabby should not be spotted in any way, excepting those few that nearly always occur on the face and sometimes on the fore-legs.
The front part of the head or face and legs, breast, and belly should have a more rich red orange tint than the back, but which should be nearly if not equal in depth of colour, though somewhat browner the markings should be graceful in curve, sharply, well, and clearly defined, with fine deep black edges, so that the brown and black are clear and distinct the one from the other, not blurred in any way. Of these those with very broad bands of black, or narrow bands of black, on nearly a black ground, are usually called black tabby, and if the bands are divided into spots instead of being in continuous lines, then it is a spotted black tabby but I purpose in this paper to deal mostly with the brown tabby - that is to say, a tabby, whose ground colour is of a very rich, orangey, dark brown ground, without any white, and that is evenly, proportionably, and not too broadly but elegantly marked on the face, head, breast, sides, back, belly, legs, and tail with bands of solid, deep, shining black. The tabby cat is doubtless one of, if not the most common of colours, and numbers many almost endless varieties of both tint and markings.
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