Unisex Brindle Cat Names

Brindle is dog terminology. The cat fancy does not use the word — no CFA, TICA, or GCCF breed standard recognizes brindle as a coat color. It belongs to Boxers, Mastiffs, and Greyhounds. When cat owners say their kitten is brindle, what they almost always mean is torbie, also called patched tabby.

A torbie is two genetic systems running at once. The X-linked orange gene (O) gives a cat patches of red over a black-based color — the tortoiseshell base. The agouti gene then lets the tabby pattern show across both colors, so stripes or swirls run through the orange patches and the dark patches alike. Wikipedia notes that orange and cream coats always show tabby pattern, even when the rest of the cat is genetically solid; a careful look at almost any tortie usually reveals it is technically a torbie.

The inheritance is sex-linked. Two X chromosomes are needed to express both color phases, so torbies are nearly always female. Male torbies appear at roughly one in three thousand births and almost all have XXY chromosomes (Klinefelter syndrome), which usually leaves them sterile. A male brindle kitten is, in genetic terms, a small medical curiosity.

Folklore travels with the pattern. In Japan torties are mi-ke — three-fur cats — believed to ward off shipwrecks. In the United States they are "money cats." In Ireland they bring good luck.

The name pool sits where torties and tabbies overlap. Browse our Tortoiseshell and Tabby galleries — those are the two parent patterns that combine to produce what dog people call brindle.