Tabby Cat Adoption

As of October 2026, 890 Tabbies are available for adoption in Canada across 88 rescues on LocalPetFinder. Listings update regularly as cats are adopted and new ones arrive — browse the current Tabbies above and apply directly through the rescue.

No : tabby is a coat pattern. Tabby cats can be any breed (Maine Coon, Bengal, Domestic Shorthair, etc.) but the swirled or striped pattern is what defines them. Most Calgary rescue tabbies are Domestic Shorthairs.

About 80% are male. The orange/red gene is X-linked, so males (XY) only need one orange gene to show the color, while females (XX) need two. Orange females do exist but are rarer.

Mackerel tabby has vertical stripes that look like fish bones. Classic tabby has bold swirls or "bullseye" patterns on the sides. Both are equally common in rescues.

No solid science behind it, but anecdotally orange tabbies are often described as friendly and food-motivated, grey/silver tabbies as calm, and brown tabbies as independent. Personality is mostly individual, not coat-driven.

A silver tabby has the same stripes as any tabby, but the silver (inhibitor) gene strips the warm pigment from the base of each hair, leaving dark black or grey markings on a pale silver-white ground. The result is a high-contrast, almost metallic coat. It is a colour variation of the tabby pattern, not a breed, though it is especially associated with British Shorthairs, American Shorthairs and Maine Coons. Silver tabbies turn up in ordinary domestic shorthair rescue too, usually listed simply as tabby or silver tabby.

Usually, yes. Tabby describes the coat, not the breed, and most tabby cats in Canadian rescues are domestic shorthairs: short-coated cats of mixed ancestry. A few are domestic longhairs or purebreds, and each listing names the breed the rescue recorded.