Black and White Cat Names, Names for Black and White Kittens, Page 4

T.S. Eliot wrote Mr. Mistoffelees as a black-and-white tuxedo tom in 1939, in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Andrew Lloyd Webber set the verse to music when Cats premiered at the New London Theatre on 11 May 1981, and the character has been performing twenty-four consecutive fouettés en tournant on stages ever since. Sylvester debuted six years after Eliot's book, in the Looney Tunes short Life with Feathers on 24 March 1945 — Wikipedia classifies him explicitly as a tuxedo cat. Socks Clinton (1989–2009) lived in the White House from 1993 to 2001. Palmerston has served as Chief Mouser of the UK Foreign Office since 2016.

The genetics are simpler than the cultural footprint suggests. Black-and-white comes from the wS white-spotting allele on the KIT gene — the same locus as solid white, but a different allele. The classic tuxedo pattern is the low-grade end of the spotting range: roughly 25 percent white, confined to paws, belly, chest, throat, and often the chin (the source of the 'goatee' look). The wS allele is not linked to deafness, unlike the dominant W that produces solid white.

Naming sorts cleanly into four buckets. Formal-wear: Tuxedo, Tux, Bowtie, Domino, Cufflink, Penguin. Famous-cat: Sylvester, Misto, Socks, Palmerston. Black-and-white pairings: Salt and Pepper, Yin and Yang, Cookie, Oreo, Checkers, Inkblot. Stage-magic, in honor of Mistoffelees: Magic, Mystic, Houdini, Conjure.