Torbies/tortie-tabbies

I am really interested in the genetics of these. I remember when I first read about them, I couldn't picture them in my head, and since then I seem to have seen loads of them!!! What is puzzling me is that there are some cats that at first glance obviously look like a tortie, and then I spot the tabby M on their forehead - does that automatically make them a torbie?? Is there a certain amount of colouring/stripes they have to have?

The "red" color on a tortie/torbie almost always has the markings of tabby. Its extremely diffiicult to get a solid "red" cat.

Anyway a tortoiseshell is a cat with black/red that is blended together (no patches like a calico).

A TORBIE is basically a tortoiseshell with heavy stripes in both the black/brown color and the red color.

One of the people in here (in the Pregnant cats I think) has a picture of their beautiful TORBIE with kittens.

You can have a PATCHED TABBY, which is basically a brown tabby with the additional colors of a red tabby.

Sometimes its hard to tell which catagory you'd call it. If it looks more like a tortoiseshell with stripes, I'd call it a TORBIE. If it looks like a brown tabby with some red mixed in, I'd call it a PATCHED TABBY.

Excellent information! I too, am so fascinated with genetics! What exactly type of Tortie is Serenity, if you don't mind my asking?

Aww...she's such a beauty Stephanie!

With all of the white she has, wouldn't she be a calico? It was my understanding, and maybe I'm wrong, but I thought if they had white, they were calico?

You can call her a blue cream tabby/white or a blue patched tabby/white.

She's not a dilute calico as the blue would have to be solid and a little paler. And calicos are basically white cats with patches of color. She has too much color to be a calico. The white is restricted to chest/feet/tummy - so its "color" and white.

She's very pretty

From recently showing my cat Autumn in TICA and CFA I found out that it all depends on who the association is. In TICA she is a Torbie. In CFA they don't have anything called a Torbie and she is called a Patched Tabby.

I find the CFA judges enjoy talking about the mixed breed classes a lot and will bring up similar topics. You can learn a lot. The TICA show they didn't talk as much. But then again it could depnd on the judge too and not all CFA shows have dsh class.

I'd call Autumn a Patched Tabby - she looks more like a brown tabby with the red in her

I was told they are the same thing though... TICA does not recognize the term Patched Tabby.

Probably so, in both cases you have a tortoiseshell mixed with a tabby

I guess torBie is too close in pronounciation to torTie So some associations changed it to Patched Tabby....

I still get confused - so if a tortie looks like a tortie and just has part of the tabby M, no other stripes they are still a tortie?? I also thought that if a tortie had any white on her, it meant she was a calico, interesting that they have to be mainly white with a few patches of colour (I don't like torties, but like them, and also like torbies with a lot of tabby in them). I also thought that any tortie that was blue and cream was a dilute cos of blue and cream being dilutes of black and red. So when they dont' really look like torties but are bluey grey and cream (or gray and pink as my friend called the one at the rescue!!), they are true dilutes??

If the brown/black in a torbie doesn't have stripes, its not a torbie. Like I said, red almost always shows stripping to some extent. You have to have more then red stripes.

And blue cream is the dilute version of the tortoiseshell.

That makes sense then.