Bicolor Cat Names: Tuxedo, Van, Mitted and the White-Spotting Spectrum
A bicolor cat is white plus one color, and the white is the whole story. It comes from the white-spotting gene (S, an insertion in KIT), and how much white a kitten gets sits on a grading scale: a low-grade locket or white toes, a medium tuxedo with bib and mittens, a high harlequin spattered with color, and at the far end the van, where pigment retreats to just the head and tail. That van pattern is named for the Turkish Van and Lake Van in eastern Turkey, home of the "swimming cats." This guide builds name lists around the pattern, not the underlying pigment: dapper formal-wear names for tuxedos (Tux, Jeeves, Gatsby, Chaplin, Bowtie), cap-and-tail names for vans, spotty cow-and-magpie names (Moo, Patches, Domino, Magpie), and crisp black-and-white classics. Every linked name is one we actually keep in our directory. Famous bicolors anchor it: Socks the Clinton tuxedo and Simon of HMS Amethyst, the only cat to win the Dickin Medal. Match the name to the amount of white.
