Tortoiseshell

True tortoiseshell (the shell of an actual turtle, that is) is black with attractive highlights of orange or cream. It has been used for cen...

Tipping

When a cat has a “tipped” coat, the individual hairs are not the same color from root to tip. Rather, the tips are of a contrasting color co...

Pasteur’s admiration

Science and human health both took a great leap forward thanks to French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822–1895), who made world-changing discover...

The unicolor

Some cats are consistently the same color all over—that is, each hair is the same color from tip to root, and hairs all over the body are th...

Vasectomy

puberty . The neutered tom is castrated, whereas a vasectomy only makes the tom sterile. A neutered tom won’t usually roam, fight or spray ur...

“Mackerel tabby”

mackerel fish , which is striped. (We can safely assume that a mackerel tabby cat would eagerly eat mackerel, also—as would any other cat.)

“Classic tabby”

As you might guess from the name, the tabby cat is so named because of the coat pattern that people associate with the word tabby. The cat’s...