Solitaire card games/Tabby Cat

Tabby Cat was created by Rick Holzegrafe, and is a single-deck solitaire card game reminiscent of Miss Milligan.

Rules

The play consists of four stacks in the tableau, with an additional "tail", where builds can be placed. Four foundations are available, and the goal of the game is to build up kings to aces (low), regardless of color or suit, whereupon the build can then be cleared from the tableau and moved to a foundation.

The play proceeds by sequentially dealing four cards to each stack of the tableau. These stacks are to be managed, building cards of lower rank on top of cards of higher rank. Building is circular, allowing a King to be built onto an Ace. Only the topmost build (or portion) may be moved from a tableau stack. An empty stack can receive any movable card or build. Partial or full builds can be moved onto the tail only if the tail is empty. If the build has, for example, 9 as its highest rank, to move off the tail it must be moved onto a card of rank 10 or onto an empty tableau space.

Variant

Closely related to Tabby Cat is another of Rick's solitaire games entitled Manx. The two games are identical except for the rules about the tail, with Manx being the more difficult of the two.

Both Tabby Cat and Manx have been implemented in numerous solitaire software packages, including Rick Holzegrafe's own Solitaire Till Dawn program.