After the Siamese I painted earlier, my niece also wanted to see her cat portrayed. This cat, named Puck, is a striped cat. This type is often called tabby cat, but actually that is wrong. Tabby does not indicate a cat breed, but the coat that has a certain pattern of stripes, lines, dots or bent patterns. These patterns occur in various cat breeds.

This cat has a Mackerel-type tabby coat, with narrow, sometimes slightly curved vertical stripes. These stripes can also form dots if they are interrupted. On the forehead you often see an M. This pattern is common in the European Shorthair, which my cousin’s cat most closely resembles. But I suspect this cat is not a thoroughbred breed.

Other types are

• Classic, with wider stripes that circle the body around a center.
• Tickled (speckled) or augoutu where the hairs have different color bands, this gives a very finely detailed coat
• Spotted without stripes, but only spots or small and large dots

There is also a fifth type, the tortoiseshell cat, which has fur that is a mixture of the other 4 types.

Cotman watercolours tubes, Faber Castel Polychromos & Pastel pencils, Posca stift on Saunders Waterford 300gsm 310×230 Cotton Satiné High White paper

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