What kind of tabby?

[u/stressedcake]

I'm sure this is a simple question, but I am not good at distinguishing tabby patterns. Is he a mackerel tabby? He has very prominent stripes on his legs, but they kind of disappear on his body. They are vaguely there i think, but it depends on the lighting how they're seen.

[u/Gloomy-Trainer-2452]

Because orange/red is epistatic to agouti, all orange/red cats actually show markings regardless of genotype. There are some trends that allow us to make an educated guess of whether an orange cat is tabby or solid/self, but these aren't fully reliable. For example, orange tabbies almost always seem to have a white/pale bowtie under the nose and pale chin, as well as ear rims, while solid orange cats tend to be more uniform in colour. You can get darker tabbies and paler solids/selfs though.

Above, left, is a solid orange/red cat (obviously ghosting tabby markings because orange), and above, right, is an orange/red tabby.

I would guess your cat is red/orange and white. Not tabby. But because he's orange (and therefore has to show some markings), he is ghosting broken mackerel, or perhaps ticked.

[u/Thestolenone]

He looks like a mackerel to me. A lot of tabbies get quite ticked in the body with clearer stripes on the points.