Searching for a tabby narrows almost nothing, so start with what does.
Tabby
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Almost every cat above is described as a tabby, and every one of those descriptions is correct. That is the problem. Tabby is the ordinary coat of the domestic cat, so using it as a search filter is close to searching for a cat with fur. The word is true, and it answers almost none of the questions you actually have.
Does the word tabby answer this?
One yes out of six. Everything in the no column has to come from the person currently living with the cat, which is what the rest of this page is about.
Short answer
Because most cats have no breed to put in the box, so people describe the coat instead. Tabby is the default pattern of the species, and it is the most obvious true thing to write about a cat you are rehoming.
The Cat Fanciers’ Association gives the number that explains it: only about five percent of all domestic cats are of any recognised breed.[1] The remaining ninety-five percent have no breed name available to them, accurate or otherwise. Faced with a form, their owners reach for the coat.
It goes deeper than description. Tabby is the pattern domestic cats started with, and the narrow mackerel striping is what the Old World wild cats they descend from still wear.[4] Cats that look solid are carrying the same pattern with the background switched dark. Tabby is not one option among many. It is the baseline, which is exactly why it makes such a weak filter.
Our own listings show the confusion this creates. Petmeetly stores Tabby as a breed value because owners pick it from the app dropdown, sitting in the same list as Siamese and British Shorthair. It is not the same kind of thing, and treating it as one is how a search ends up returning almost every cat on the platform.
Short answer
Adopters do choose partly on the coat, and it shows up in the data. Research at a no-kill shelter found coat pattern affected how long cats waited for a home. No research shows the coat predicting anything about the cat itself.
A study of length of stay at an open-admission, no-kill shelter found that coat patterning influenced how long cats waited, in adults and kittens alike. Across the whole population the average wait was 61.2 days, and individual cats ranged from under a day to two full years.[2] The published summary does not break that effect down to tabby specifically. So anyone telling you tabbies wait longer, or wait less, is filling in a gap the research left open.
Put those two things together and you get the useful version. People are sorting cats by appearance, and appearance carries no information about how a cat will live with you. That gap is where good cats get overlooked and where mismatched ones get chosen.
The fix is not to ignore the photograph. It is to stop the photograph from being the deciding vote. Use it to make a shortlist, then let the conversation with the current owner do the actual choosing.
Short answer
On Petmeetly you are usually talking to the person the cat lives with right now. Nobody knows it better. These are the questions worth their time and yours.
Questions that predict your life with the cat
Ask to meet the cat where it currently lives if that is possible. You will learn more in ten minutes watching a cat in its own home than in an hour of messages, and it tells the current owner that you are serious.
Short answer
Usually because of something in the owner’s life rather than something wrong with the cat. That is the single most useful thing to understand before you start reading listings.
A study following more than two thousand relinquished cats over two decades found that owner-related reasons outweighed behaviour problems. The researchers thought the result mattered enough to put it in the title of the paper.[3] The ordinary reasons are housing that no longer allows pets, a change in health, or a change in circumstances. None of them are the cat’s fault.
Most rehoming on Petmeetly happens directly between owners rather than through an institution. That has a real advantage. The person handing the cat over has watched it every day, and they can answer questions no shelter intake form would ever capture.
When to slow down
Short answer
Start small. One quiet room, the litter tray, the food it already eats, and somewhere to hide. Let the cat decide when the rest of the house happens.
How long settling takes varies so much between cats that any confident number is invented. Some cats are on the sofa the first evening and some take weeks. Ask the previous owner how this particular cat has handled change before, because that is the only real evidence you have.
If you are still deciding between an adult and a kitten, the trade is simple. An adult is a known quantity you can assess before committing. A kitten is a forecast. You can see tabby kittens listed for sale if you are set on starting from the beginning.
Petmeetly connects owners to each other. The cat you end up with will almost certainly be a tabby, because most cats are. Choose it for everything else.
Because it is the ordinary coat of the species rather than a special category. Most cats belong to no breed at all, so when someone rehoming a cat has to describe it, the pattern is the most obvious true thing to write down. The word is accurate and it is doing very little work.
Nothing at all. Coat pattern is decided by pigment genes, and none of the published work links them to behaviour. A tabby cat can be a lap cat or a cat who watches you from the top of a bookshelf, and the coat gives you no way to tell which.
The pattern does not decide size, so the honest answer is to look at the individual cat. If it is already an adult, what you can see is what you get. That is one of the real advantages of taking on a grown cat rather than a kitten.
There is no evidence for it. The 2025 research that identified the gene behind orange coats is entirely about pigment chemistry and makes no claim about behaviour. Judge the cat in front of you, not its colour.
Research at a no-kill shelter found that coat patterning did influence how long cats waited. The published summary does not break out tabby specifically, so nobody should tell you tabbies wait longer or less long. What it does show is that people are choosing partly on coat.
Ask why the cat is being rehomed, how it behaves with visitors, and whether it has lived with children or other animals. Ask about litter habits and what it eats too. These answers predict your life with the cat. The coat predicts none of it.
Usually because of something happening in the owner’s life rather than something wrong with the cat. A study of more than two thousand relinquished cats found owner-related reasons outweighed behaviour problems, which is the finding its authors put in the title.
An adult cat is a known quantity and a kitten is a forecast. With an adult you can see the size, the coat, the energy level and much of the temperament before you commit. With a kitten you are guessing at all four.
It varies enough that any confident number is made up. Give the cat one quiet room with its litter tray, food and a hiding place, and let it come out on its own schedule. Ask the current owner how it handled the last change of scene.
No. The Cat Fanciers’ Association estimates only about five percent of domestic cats belong to any recognised breed. A cat with no papers is the normal case, not a warning sign, and papers would tell you nothing about whether it suits your home.
No. Markings are fixed long before birth and they do not age with the cat. Ask the current owner for the age and, if there are any, the vet records. A vet can also estimate age from teeth and general condition.
You will find one, because all four patterns are common. Just do not let the coat outrank the things that actually decide it: age, energy, health history, and how the cat handles your particular household.
Sources
Fact-checked against peer-reviewed shelter and relinquishment research, peer-reviewed feline genetics, and the CFA registration and show rules.
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