I'd never even seen a tabby-tortoiseshell when I was eight. It seems like when I was four cats were solid black or gray, and then I lived in a neighborhood where *all* the cats were orange and white (someone was very prolific), and only later did all these other variations start to show up. I'm sure that's a very local view. But I still think of tricolors and brown tabbies as fairly unusual even though they're really not.