LITMIR.BIZ

      The word tabby was derived from a kind of taffeta, or ribbed silk, which when calendered or what is now termed "watered," is by that process covered with wavy lines. This stuff, in bygone times, was often called "tabby:" hence the cat with lines or markings on its fur was called a "tabby" cat. But it might also, one would suppose, with as much justice, be called a taffety cat, unless the calendering of "taffety" caused it to become "tabby." Certain it is that the word tabby only referred to the marking or stripes, not to the absolute colour, for in "Wit and Drollery" (1682), p. 343, is the following:—

      Be that as it may, I think there is little doubt that the foregoing was the origin of the term. Yet it was also called the brinded cat, or the brindled cat, also tiger cat, with some the gray cat, graymalkin; but I was rather unprepared to learn that in Norfolk and Suffolk it is called a Cyprus cat. "Why Cyprus cat?" quoth I. "I do not know," said my informant. "All I know is, that such is the case."

      So I referred to my Bailey's Dictionary of 1730, and there, "sure enough," was the elucidation; for I found that Cyprus was a kind of cloth made of silk and hair, showing wavy lines on it, and coming from Cyprus; therefore this somewhat strengthens the argument in favour of "taffeta," or "tabby," but it is still curious that the Norfolk and Suffolk people should have adopted a kind of cloth as that representing the markings and colour of the cat, and that of a different name from that in use for the cat—one or more counties calling it a "tabby cat," as regards colour, and the other naming the same as "Cyprus." I take this to be exceedingly interesting. How or when such naming took place I am at present unable to get the least clue, though I think from what I gather from one of the Crystal Palace Cat Show catalogues, that it must have been after 1597, as the excerpt shows that at that time the shape and colour was like a leopard's, which, of course, is spotted, and is always called the spotted leopard. (Since this I have learned that the domestic cat is said to have been brought from Cyprus by merchants, as also was the tortoiseshell. Cyprus is a colour, a sort of reddish-yellow, something like citron; so a Cyprus cat may mean a red or yellow tabby.)

      However, I find Holloway, in his "Dictionary of Provincialisms" (1839), gives the following:—

      "Calimanco Cat, s. (calimanco, a glossy stuff), a tortoiseshell cat, Norfolk."

      Salmon, in "The Compleat English Physician," 1693, p. 326, writing of the cat, says: "It is a neat and cleanly creature, often licking itself to keep it fair and clean, and washing its face with its fore feet; the best are such as of a fair and large kind and of an exquisite tabby color called Cyprus cats."