Dark Cat Names, Names That Mean Dark, Page 6

Edgar Allan Poe published "The Black Cat" in the Saturday Evening Post on August 19, 1843, naming his protagonist's doomed first cat Pluto — after the Roman god of the underworld, not the planet — and establishing much of the Anglo-American shadow-cat literary tradition that still runs through Sabrina, Hocus Pocus, and the giant talking Behemoth in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. The dark cat in fiction is rarely just a cat; it's a sign.

The folklore splits by hemisphere. British tradition reads a dark cat crossing your path as good luck; sailors' wives kept them at home for safe-voyage charm. American folk tradition inherited the European witch-trial association, which is why dark cats still carry an undeserved bad-luck reputation in US pop culture. Japanese tradition runs the other way — the kuroneko maneki-neko exists specifically as a protective amulet, particularly for women. Bastet, the Egyptian cat-goddess, is sometimes depicted in dark coats in temple art.

"Dark" is not strictly a coat-color genetic term the way "black" or "blue" are. It covers solid blacks, the deliberately melanistic Bombay (Nikki Horner began the breed in Louisville in 1958, CFA Championship granted 1976), dark tortoiseshells, dark tabbies, and any cat the household calls dark.

Names that mean "dark" across languages: Nyx (Greek goddess of night), Sable (Old French heraldic), Ciara (Irish for "dark-haired"), Kuro (Japanese), Layla (Arabic for "night"), Nera (Italian). Literary dark cats: Pluto. Behemoth. Salem. Binx.