Top 10 Dark, Light & Striped Cat Names

Her personality takes weeks to show. Her coat, you can see from the doorway.

Name what you can see. Scroll to her coat.

Dark Cat Names

Black, charcoal, or smoke. In a dim room she's two eyes and a shape. Give her a name with some night in it.

• Ink – black to the tips, gets on everything
• Onyx – polished black stone with a stare
• Raven – glossy, clever, hoards your hair ties
• Jet – black, and across the room before you blink
• Espresso – dark, small, keeps you up at night
• Panther – the jungle cat, apartment edition
• Soot – charcoal grey, rubs off on white sheets
• Cinder – charcoal with a spark still in it
• Smudge – smoke grey, soft at the edges
• Ash – dark grey, cool and quiet

Light Cat Names

White, cream, or pale. Turn off the lamp and she's still there, a soft glow on the couch. Her name can be that soft.

• Pearl – white with a glow under it
• Dove – soft white, quiet feet
• Cotton – white, fluffy, barely there
• Casper – appears from nowhere, means no harm
• Frost – white coat, cold blue eyes
• Yeti – big, white, mostly fur
• Opal – milky white, a flash of color in the eyes
• Vanilla – cream, sweet, nobody's second choice
• Custard – pale yellow, soft in the middle
• Oat – pale, plain, good for you

Striped Cat Names

Tabbies arrive patterned: stripes down the sides, rings on the tail, an M on the forehead. It's the first thing anyone notices. Don't name around it.

• Tiger – the classic, and she wears it well
• Mackerel – the real name for the fishbone stripe
• Marble – swirls instead of stripes, still counts
• Marmalade – orange, and the stripes are the peel
• Garfield – orange, striped, not a morning cat
• Hobbes – stuffed tiger by day, real one by night
• Chipmunk – stripe down the back, cheeks full of kibble
• Barcode – stripes down each side, scans as a cat
• Pinstripe – grey stripes, dressed for the office
• Ripple – stripes that move when she walks

How to Know a Name Fits

Look at her in the light she lives in. Coats change with it. A black cat turns brown in full sun. A white cat goes gold under a lamp. Stripes fade in a dim hallway. Pick the name for the cat you see most evenings, not the one in the sunny photo.

If she's still a kitten, watch the fur. It moves in the first year: faint stripes fade, pale fur darkens, smoke comes in slowly. Name the coat she's growing into.

If there's a second cat, name the difference. A dark name and a light name sort themselves. Two dark names blur into one.

Your camera roll already knows. Whatever you've photographed twenty times — the shine, the stripes, the white chin — is the thing about her you can't stop looking at. Name that.

If she ever ends up on your wall, that's the photo we'd paint from.