Tabby Cat Gifts: Which Tabby Pattern Is Theirs?

Prices and lead times checked October 2026.

Yes, we stitch cats. That is worth saying at the top, because a pet portrait studio is usually assumed to mean dogs, and plenty of cat owners never get as far as asking. We stitch dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, hamsters, birds and reptiles, and cats are a steady part of what comes through the studio in Cambridge.

Now the part that matters for buying. If you are shopping for someone with a tabby, you are not shopping for a breed. You are shopping for a pattern, and the pattern has four quite different versions. Picking the wrong one is the single most common way a tabby gift misses, and it is entirely avoidable once you know what to look for.

Is a tabby cat a breed?

No, and this is the thing to get straight before you buy anything. Tabby describes how the coat is marked, not what the cat is. A British Shorthair can be a tabby. A Maine Coon can be a tabby. The cat who turned up in your friend's garden in 2019 and never left can be a tabby. The word tells you about the markings and nothing at all about the animal wearing them.

That matters commercially, because the tabby aisle is enormous. Search for a tabby cat gift and you will find hundreds of cards, mugs and prints, all confidently labelled tabby. Every one of them had to choose a pattern to draw, and pattern is exactly the variable the label does not pin down. So the design is not wrong in the sense of being badly made. It is wrong in the sense of being a different cat.

There is a second consequence worth knowing. Because tabby is not a breed, there is no breed register to look it up in, no official tabby count and no ranking. Cat breeds in the UK are registered by bodies other than the Royal Kennel Club, which deals with dogs, and a pattern would not appear in a breed register in any case. If you see a page telling you how many tabbies there are in Britain, somebody made that up. We are not going to.

What we can tell you is what comes through our own studio. Around 70 per cent of the cats we are asked to stitch are tabbies, and that count includes ginger cats, which are almost always tabby patterned under the orange. That is our order book rather than a national figure. It is also why the question this page is built around matters so much: the tabby is the cat we see most, and it is the one a generic design is most likely to get wrong.

Which tabby pattern does their cat have?

Here is the practical version, with the single detail that settles each one. You can usually identify a cat from across a room using this table, which is the point of it.

Two more things turn up on all four. The first is the M on the forehead, a set of lines above the eyes that nearly every tabby carries, whatever its pattern. It is one of the most recognisable markings on any cat and it is the detail owners notice instantly if it is missing. The second is that the warm background colour between the markings is itself banded, which is what gives tabby coats their slightly grainy, lit from within look rather than a flat block of colour.

If you are still unsure after the table, look at the shoulders. Mackerel gives you lines there. Classic gives you that butterfly. Spotted gives you a scatter in rows. Ticked gives you almost nothing. Shoulders decide it faster than anything else on the cat.

Why does a generic tabby design usually show the wrong cat?

It is worth separating this from the problem you get with a crossbreed dog, because the two sound alike and are not. With a crossbreed, the trouble is that nothing is defined, so there is no correct version to draw. With a tabby, the opposite is true. The four patterns are well defined, long recognised and easy to tell apart. The problem is not an absence of a standard. It is that there are four of them, and the gift trade has quietly settled on one.

You can hear the difference in how tabby owners talk. They will tell you their cat is a classic, or that she is a silver spotted one, or that he is a brown mackerel with white socks. That is not jargon. It is the shortest accurate description available, and it exists because the patterns genuinely are distinguishable. Which is also why getting it wrong is so visible.

A portrait designed from your own photo sidesteps the whole question. We are not working from an idea of a tabby. We are working from the cat in the picture, with the stripes going the way they actually go.

Which tabby cat gifts actually work?

Everything below is embroidered rather than printed, made to order in our Cambridge studio, and designed from a photo of their cat. Prices were correct in October 2026.

If you want a wider sweep, including ideas that are nothing to do with us, our cat guides cover more ground than this page does: what to get someone who loves their cat and Christmas gifts for cat lovers. If the cat you are buying for is black rather than tabby, the considerations are completely different and we have written them up separately in black cat gifts. Every breed and coat type we have written up is listed on our pet gifts by breed page.

What photo should you send of a tabby cat?

We have a full guide to choosing the best photo for an embroidered pet portrait, which covers the general rules. What follows is the tabby part, and it is mostly about pattern rather than light.

The first thing is the pose. Cats compress. A cat loafing with its paws tucked, or curled nose to tail in a chair, has hidden the shoulders and shortened the flank, which is exactly where the butterfly and the whorl sit. The same cat sitting up straight shows you everything. If you only have the loaf, send it and tell us, and add a second photo of the cat standing or stretched if one exists.

The second is the background. Tabby markings are mid tone and soft edged, and they disappear into a patterned blanket, a rug or a busy sofa. A cat on a plain surface in daylight shows the pattern properly. This is less about exposure and more about not asking us to pick the cat out of wallpaper.

The third is simply telling us. If you know their cat is a classic rather than a mackerel, say so when you order. It takes you five seconds and it removes any chance of us reading an ambiguous photo the wrong way.

Every photo is reviewed by a person before any design work starts. About 70 per cent are approved with no edits at all, and roughly 1 in 25 need a retake, where we come back and ask for another. On a tabby, a retake usually means the pattern is not legible rather than the photo being bad.

How much detail goes into a tabby coat?

More than people expect, and the reason is that a tabby is two things at once: a patterned coat and a shaded one. The markings have to be right, and the banded background colour underneath them has to be right as well, or the cat comes out looking like a plain cat with stripes painted on.

For a sense of the scale involved, at least six thread shades go into a single golden retriever coat, and a golden retriever has no pattern at all, just gradation from cream to deeper gold. A tabby has that same gradation plus a set of markings sitting on top of it, which is why the pattern question at the start of this page matters so much. We are not placing stripes onto a flat background. We are building a coat that already has depth and then resolving the markings through it.

There are unlimited revisions before anything is stitched, which is the real safety net here. If the first design comes back and the swirls read too tight, or the stripes are too heavy against the ground colour, or the M is not as pronounced as it is in life, you say so and it changes. The machine does not start until you are happy.

How long does it take, and when should you order?

The lead time is 2 to 3 weeks depending on how busy the studio is, and the current figure is shown at checkout rather than guessed at here. Everything is made to order, so there is no shelf with a tabby sweatshirt on it.

• Day 0, you orderYou upload the photo at checkout and tell us anything useful, including the pattern name if you know it and whether the cat has white on the chest or paws.
• Within a day or two, we review the photoA person checks it before any design work begins. About 70 per cent are approved with no edits. Roughly 1 in 25 come back for a retake.
• Then, the designThe portrait is designed from your photo and sent over for approval. Unlimited revisions, so the pattern can be adjusted until it looks like her.
• 2 to 3 weeks from order, stitched and shippedMade in Cambridge on one of our 29 embroidery machines and shipped worldwide. Free UK delivery over £75, or £3.99 Royal Mail 48 Tracked below that.

For Christmas, take the date you want it in their hands, count back 3 weeks and order before that. A long sleeved piece also gets free sleeve embroidery, which is a small icon such as a paw print or a heart plus a name, and on a cat piece the name is the detail people mention most.

When is Lucy & Lola not the right answer?

Often enough that it is worth being plain about it, so you do not spend an evening on us for nothing.

• Your budget is under £25. Nothing custom and embroidered comes in under £25, which is the iron-on patch, and most pieces sit between £50 and £80. Our stocking fillers for pet lovers collection starts at £2, but those are stock designs and small extras rather than a portrait of their cat, and some items come and go. For a genuinely cheap gift with their tabby in it, a printed photo in a decent frame beats anything we sell at that price.
• You want a figurine, a model or an ornament. We do not make them and have no plans to. Look for a ceramicist or a needle felting maker instead, and you will find both on Etsy or at a craft market.
• You need it this week. Made to order means 2 to 3 weeks really is 2 to 3 weeks. Buy something immediate now and give the portrait later, or hand over a card saying it is being made.
• You want a painting, a print or an illustration. Everything we make is embroidered, apart from a small range of large scale print graphic sweatshirts. If the brief is paint on canvas, commission a painter.
• You actually want a generic tabby design. Some people do, and that is fine. An illustrator or a print shop with a tabby range will serve you better and cost less. Just pick the pattern deliberately rather than by accident.

Frequently asked questions