猫柄 – Types of Cats in Japanese

types of cats

Cats have all sorts of colors, patterns and fur. Japanese actually has several words to explain this variety in cat coats. Let’s take a look at some of the main types of cats.

キジトラ – Pheasant Tiger

A cat lookingFirst we have キジトラ or in Kanji, 雉虎きじとら. This type of cat is brown mostly with black stripes. Basically, キジトラ in English would be a brown tabby cat. The name 雉虎 comes from two words for two animals

  • Pheasant
  • Tiger

I am guessing it got this name because a female pheasant is brown with stripes. So, we could call this kind of cat a pheasant tiger in English. You will see below, that many other cats are also referred to with the word for tiger, 虎 in Japanese. This obviously is to refer to any striped tabby cat.

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茶トラ – Tea Tiger

Our second cat is also a tiger. That is a brown tiger. Hmm, that is a bit confusing since we were just talking about a brown tabby. 茶虎ちゃとら is actually what orange tabby cats are called. We know already that 虎 means tiger. How about ? Well this world literally means tea in Japanese. But, it is also used to mean the color brown, as in 茶色ちゃいろ which is the word for brown.

サバトラ – Mackerel Tiger

image of a cute catNext we have our grays. 鯖虎さばとら literally translates to mackerel tiger.  This cat coat refers to gray or silver looking cats. Kind of like the mackerel fish which has a silver like shine to it. Hence then name.

三毛猫 – Three-Hair Cat

The name for a calico cat in Japanese is 三毛猫みけねこ. This word can be broken down as the following.

  • 三毛Three hair
  • Cat

The 三毛 in the name of course refers to the three colors of this cat. Which are black, white and orange.

錆猫 – Rusty Cat

Cat speakingさび means rust in Japanese. A 錆猫さばねこ would be cats that have a mix of black and orange.

黒猫 and 白猫

Next, we have black cats, 黒猫くろねこ and white cats, 白猫しろねこ. This is self-explanatory as means black, and means white.

ハチワレ – Breaking Pots

hachiwareThis cat needs a little bit more explanation. First off, ハチワレ are those cats that have black around the eyes and mostly their back and starting between their eyes to their stomach are mostly white. There are actually a few ways we can translate this.

  • 鉢割はちわBreaking pots
  • 八割はちわSplit like the character Eight

First, comes from the Japanese verb, れる. This verb means to break or split.  The 鉢割れ word is to refer to the pattern on the cats head. Since it is black around the eyes and has white in the middle it resembles a broken pot. Also, conveniently the Japanese word for eight, はち is also pronounced the same and the character 八 looks like the split between the cats eyes.

if you want to learn more Japanese I reviewed a dictionary of grammar series which I personally recommend and use myself.

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