Amy: 🎶 Hello and welcome to Season 2, Episode 13 of Expecto Podtronum, a podcast dedicated to all things Patronuses.🎶 

I’m your host Amy.

Carolyn: I’m Carolyn.

Sidney: I’m Sidney and today we’ll be talking about the black and white cat. 

Amy: Yes. And this is another Patronus that is specified by the coloring of it [Yes] when they are just blue mist, you know. Okay.

Sidney: So I have a question. We’re talking about what we generally call a tuxedo cat, right?

Carolyn: Not just one, no.

Sidney: Not just. [Yes] There’re other kinds of black and white cats?

Amy: Yes. Don’t you worry, Sidney. 

Sidney: Oh good. 

Amy: I’ve got a whole list. [Laughter]

Sidney: Give me all that good, good cat info.

Amy: Okay, I will. So a little bit about black and white cats. Black and white cats are not a specific breed. In fact, there are no cat breeds that are exclusively black and white colored. It’s a color variation that can be found over many different breeds. 

Breeds with this color variation include but are not limited to British Shorthair, American Shorthair, Cymric, Maine Coon, Munchkin, Japanese Bobtail, Siberian Forest cat, Persian, Oriental Shorthair, Manx, and Scottish Fold, and so many more.

Sidney: Well that’s interesting because I know that one of the Patronuses on our list is the Manx cat. [Yes] So if you had a black and white Manx cat Patronus that’d be…?

Amy: Is it a Manx or is it a black and white? I don’t know. How do you fall on a list? [I don’t know] Who knows? [Laughter]

Sidney: Hopefully the symbolism and personality traits aren’t that different because if having a Manx cat says one thing about you and a black and white cat is the opposite, that would be very strange. Maybe it would mean that you’re a person with a lot of conflict.

Amy: Yeah. So knowing that and knowing that pretty much almost any breed of cat could be a black and white cat, the black and white color variation also can be broken down further into color patterns. 

As Sidney mentioned before, tuxedo cats, that would be considered a pattern. A color pattern under the black and white color variation umbrella. So some of these patterns…

Carolyn: My brother has two of these.

Amy: Oh really? 

Carolyn: Mm-hmm.

Amy: Nice. We have the locket pattern, which is mostly black with a little bit of white on the stomach or the neck. We have mitted, which is black all over with white feet or mittens. 

We have tuxedo, which is a black body with white feet, chest, stomach, and nose, making them look like they’re wearing little tuxedos. We have bi-colored, which is half black and half white.

Sidney: Question on that one. [Yeah] Does it matter how the half is split?

Carolyn: I don’t think it’s down the middle.

Sidney: Is it like a…

Carolyn: We’re not talking like a stripe at their belly or…[Laughter]

Sidney: Are we talking about Chimera cats or a tortoiseshell pattern or is it just spotty?

Carolyn: I think It’s spotty and evenly distributed in terms of overall color.

Sidney: So it’s if they’re [Yes] spotty black and white and they don’t fit into any of these other patterns, [Bingo] then they’re bi-colored. 

Amy: I believe so. 

Sidney: Fascinating. [Laughter]

Carolyn: Although it would be amazing to see one where it stops at the stomach and the other half of the cats a different color. [Laughter]

Sidney: No those exist! It’s called a Chimera because if a cat is half one, that’s what makes a tortoiseshell cat like mine. On her face you can see a straight line down the middle where this half is more orange and this half is more black. And that happens a lot with cats. If you can see a split pattern where there’s a really distinct separation, they’re a Chimera.

Carolyn: Okay, I’m Googling this.

Amy: Interesting. I’m looking at pictures and it looks like a…

Carolyn: I don’t think so. no, because look at the pictures when you Google it. This is like, it’s just…

Amy: It’s like the distribution of it almost.

Sidney: I read ahead and now I have even more questions. Carry on Amy.

Amy: [Laughter] Okay, next we have the magpie, which is white cat with black spots. 

Sidney: [sounds of frustration] Okay. 

Amy: A Harley Quinn which is similar to magpie but with a black tail. A magpie would be white cat with black spots and maybe the tail is also spotted or white.

Sidney: [sounds of frustration] Okay. 

Amy: The harlequin is white cat black spots with a black tail.

Sidney: This is way too vague for my liking. [Laughter] There needs to be more clearly defined rules so I know which is which.

Amy: I mean, these are pulled off of Purina, which seems like they would know their stuff.

Sidney: I’m sure they do. I’m just mad about it. [Laughter] Whoever made these distinctions did not have enough…They were not trying hard enough for my liking. Carry on. Carry on, Amy. I’ll stop complaining about it.

Amy: Then there’s cap’n saddle, which is black on the head like a hat and a black splotch on the back like a saddle. And it might also have a black tail. 

Sidney looks so concerned right now. [Laughter] I’m ruining her night.

Sidney: [Laughter] Yeah, I’m bothered. Is that really a common enough spotting pattern to have its own distinct name? Especially compared to [Yes] like, bi-color, which is just it’s a little bit black and a little bit white. 

And magpie, which are white and a little bit black. And then Harlequin [So], which is like, it’s white with a little bit of black, but a little bit more black.

Amy: I’ve seen a lot of these cap’n saddle kind of cats and from the pictures I’m seeing of the bi-colored black and white cats, it looks very similar to cap and saddle.

But I think the difference with bi-colored [frustrated Sidney noises]  is it doesn’t have to be specifically head and saddle. It could also have some black like down at sides, whereas cap and saddle is a very specific cap, swatch on the back. 

Sidney: Oh. Oh, no. Okay, Amy, Amy, Amy. 

Amy: Sidney! Sidney! [Laughter]

Sidney: No, a bi-colored cat also known as a piebald cat is a cat with a coat consisting of one primary color combined with any amount of white. All of these are actually subcategories of bi-color! And it gets worse. It gets worse! 

Carolyn: But it gets its own.

Sidney: Bi-color. The other name for it is piebald, but the word piebald is a portmanteau of magpie, [Yes] which is one of the subcategories. [So] I’m so angry about this.

Amy: Okay, so…[Laughter]

Carolyn: I didn’t do this part of the research! I wash my hands of all of it! 

Sidney: I’m not mad at you.

Amy: Piebald is literally like spotting. It’s not black and white. So you could have any colored [Yeah] piebald, cat, horse, whatever.

Sidney: Piebald and bi-colored are the same thing. [Yes] It means that there’s two colors in some sort of pattern. [Yeah] But to have bi-colored be a subcategory of bi-colored. 

And to have the name of bi-colored be another way of saying magpie and then to have magpie as one of the subcategories. [Well] I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at whoever made this up.

Amy: Well the problem here is magpie is very specifically white cat with black spots. Whereas isn’t a bicolored black cat with white spots?

Sidney: It’s half and half. It means there are two colors. 

Carolyn: I don’t know enough about the etymology and Liz isn’t here.

Amy: Yes, so yeah, and I do have a little bit about genetics here, maybe that will help. 

Sidney: Okay, maybe that will help me.

Amy: We’re gonna blame Purina for this list because that’s where this came from. [Laughter]

Sidney: Boo Purina! 

Carolyn: Like the cat food company? 

Amy: Yeah.

Sidney: Yeah.

Carolyn: Okay. I can blame them. 

Sidney: Boo corporation. [Laughter]

Amy: I think where the confusion comes in on this [Pretty much] is, yeah, so like we all know….

Sidney: Yes, tell me where the confusion comes in. I’m swimming in it. [Laughter]

Amy: I think that there’s differences in what is your base color and what’s not. I think that’s what it is. But yes.

Carolyn: Like their skin under the fur?

Amy: Yeah, but we can remove bi-color from this list because it’s going to give Sidney a heart attack. [Laughter]

Sidney: I’m fine. I will live. I’ll live. But taxonomy is like a crapshoot at the best of times, [Yeah] I’m just… I can make my peace with it.

Amy: It’s very confusing.

Sidney: Yeah.

Amy: We do have one last one on the list which is van. Which is splashes of black between the ears and a black tail.

Carolyn: So it’s mostly a white cat.

Sidney: I’m not going to question why they named it van. I’m going to accept it and move on.

Amy: Who knows. [Laughter]

Carolyn: They were wearing Vans gym shoes. [So this is] For all the logic we need. [Laughter]

Sidney: Okay. Alright. Sure.

Amy: This is either going to help us or make us way more confused. I don’t know. But since Liz isn’t on this episode, I’m going to talk about genetics. [Laughter]

Carolyn: I was gonna say, we need Liz.

Sidney: Give me some science to make it make sense.

Amy: Cats have genetics that can produce different black and white patterns when the genes are in the right combination. They have the white spotting gene, which means white masks the black on different parts of the body. 

If you’re thinking of it in layers, the mask or the thing that’s covering the black is the white [So]. So black is kind of the base.

Sidney: They are black cats with a mutation or with a certain genetic trait which puts white on top of the black. 

Amy: Yes.

Sidney: Okay.

Amy: So far so good. We can wrap our minds around this. [Laughter]

Sidney: I’m good with that. I love that. That’s science.

Amy: Great. So they have the white spotting gene, which means white masks the black on different parts of the body. It does this by preventing the color producing melanocytes from migrating to those particular areas. That’s how we get these black and white patterns. 

The spotting gene produces different grades of white spotting on a scale from one to 10. Something like a tuxedo cat falls in the low grades from a one to a four with less white and more black on it. 

The lower the number is, the less white is on the cat. On the opposite end of the scale, [Sigh] something like a magpie cat would be high on the scale, like a nine or 10, because there’s so much white.

Sidney: Okay, my takeaway here is that really it’s just something that’s on a scale. It’s a range and they put it into arbitrary categories and then they made up numbers to try to justify those arbitrary categories.

Amy: Probably. 

Carolyn: And we can blame it all on Purina cat food.

Sidney: Yeah. Boo cat food!

Amy: Well, no, because this one, the genetics, that’s from How Stuff Works.

Sidney: Yeah, yeah, genetics. Like the genetics say they’re gonna have some level of spotting and it’s gonna be up to the individual, you know, the way that shakes out. 

But then we say [Yeah] like, ‘oh, we’ve got to categorize this.’ [Yup] And we made up a whole bunch of nonsense categories. And then we had to make up numbers to try to justify those categories. 

Amy: Yeah. [Laughter]

Sidney: Okay. Sure. Fine.

Amy: Humans are weird that way. 

Sidney: Okay. [Sigh]

Amy: Yeah. While there’s no definitive history of when the gene combination started happening to get black and white cats, it’s believed to date back to at least ancient Egypt because bi-color cats have been found and identified in their tombs. 

Sidney: What kind of cats?

Amy: There’s your bi-color cat, Sidney!

[Laughter]

Sidney: Okay, I’m fine. It’s fine. I will let this go eventually.

Carolyn: Very zen. Zen. It’s all good. 

Sidney: [Laughter] I’m Zen, I’m Zen. I love it when things are vague for no reason.

Amy: I don’t know why they put bi-color on the list. It doesn’t make sense because like you say, [Sigh] obviously any black and white cat is bi-colored. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Sidney: I don’t know. I will make my peace.

Carolyn: Any cat with two colors is bi-colored. My Siamese was bi-colored. 

Sidney: Right. Piebald.

Amy: Right. I guess maybe if it doesn’t fall into any of the other categories and you’re like, what is it called? Maybe that’s why bi-colored is on the list.

Sidney: Mm-hmm.

Carolyn: It doesn’t fit any of the other molds? Sure.

Sidney: It’s and the rest.

Amy: Yes, the bi-colored is the and the rest of the black and white cat. Yeah. Depending on the breed, a black and white cat could have short hair or long hair and can be anywhere up to 36 inches in length and weigh up to 18 pounds. 

Again, depending on the breed, because we know a Maine Coon cat is a very big cat. Whereas, you know, Munchkin cat is not.

Carolyn: Tiny. [Laughter]

Amy: In pop culture, we see a lot of black and white cats. Probably the most famous that your mind might go to is Sylvester from Looney Tunes. Always chasing around Tweety Bird. He is a white, a black and white tuxedo cat. 

We’ve got Felix the Cat, which is a cartoon created during the 1920s. If you’ve seen the cat clock with the eyes going back and forth and the tail going back and forth. That is Felix. 

The Cat in the Hat is a tuxedo cat. [I was picturing] And T.S. Eliot’s 1939 book of poems refers to a group of black and white cats as Jellicle cats.

Sidney: Yes, this is…

Carolyn: Oh, she’s got the book!

Amy: Excellent, look at that!

Sidney: Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot which is in fact the book that inspired the musical Cats [Yes] that we all know and love from Broadway [Yes] and from the gloriously beautiful CGI abomination that we all love to hate. [Laughter]

Carolyn: I was say, that was an interesting abomination.

Sidney: There is our [There’s the Jellicle cat] tuxedo cat is right there on the cover.

Amy: And he is a jaunty little fellow with a top hat and a cane.

Sidney: He is a jaunty little fellow!

Carolyn: They made a tuxedo cat Lego set. I bought it for my brother for Christmas. 

Amy: Nice.

Carolyn: Well, he had two. I had to add a third. It’s two real tuxedos…real black and white cats.

Amy: While it’s impossible to really assign a personality to a cat that isn’t even its own breed, cat owners often say that black and white cats are special ones. They have pretty big personalities and are fun-loving. But again, that is generalizing across a very large amount of cat breeds.

Carolyn: Interesting. Yeah, this cat isn’t even its own breed of cat, so this is an interesting one.

Amy: Yeah.

Sidney: Oh, we’re going to get to that later. I have thoughts.

Carolyn: You have thoughts. I love it.

Sidney: I have thoughts. 

Amy: Sidney is stewing at the color variations list still you can tell.. 

Sidney: I am.

Amy: She’s turning red. She can’t contain herself anymore. [Laughter]

Sidney: I’m contained. I’m so contained.

[Laughter}

Amy: Well she can’t move because then her chair will squeak and then her mic will…

Carolyn: Ruin the audio, so ha, she’s contained.

Amy: This is how we keep Sidney under control.

Sidney: Yes.

[Laughter]

Carolyn: Alright, well, symbolism and spirituality were kind of one with this when I was doing my research. I couldn’t really find one just on symbolism or just on… usually I try to kind of keep those two separate. [M-hmm] Black and white cats have a natural duality that makes them unique and able to deliver powerful messages. 

This kind of immediately made me go, we’ve had so many different black and white animals from magpie to even our osprey a couple episodes ago. [M-hmm] Light and darkness, good and evil, yin and yang, right and wrong. 

I mean, there’s so many. I feel this is a thing with anything that is black and white, they want to just stick it on there like it’s a label. [Laughter]

Amy: Just bi-colored. Yeah. A label. 

Carolyn: It’s like bi-colored. was a little bit… This was my version of Sidney’s bi-colored rant [Laughter] because I was like, ‘this is starting to happen all too often with the coloring of certain animals.’ Especially one that’s not even its own breed.

Sidney: I will hold my peace for now.

Carolyn: Okay, you can hold your piece. You can have your rant when I’m done with my symbolism. [Laughter]

Sidney: I will, I will.

Carolyn: The most popular and widely accepted school of thought is that these cats represent spiritual balance in the world and in your life and that it could also mean there is healing in the works. That healing, that the healing should be a memo that they gave to Sylvester. Maybe he needs to accept that he’s not going to get Tweety Bird.  [Laughter]

In terms of balance, black and white, a black and white feline in your presence could be a reminder from the universe that balance is critical to living a full and healthy life. Again, I go back to all the other black and white animals in my head. 

Their fur shows us how beautiful contrasting elements can be when they exist in balance and harmony. In terms of healing, seeing a black and white cat while battling an illness should be seen as a blessing. It’s considered a sign from the universe that healing is coming your way. For this black and white cat is said to help others manifest healing. 

However, they do put the caveat in the doc that I found that that does not mean the healing is gonna happen suddenly. So no like, ‘hoo hoo hoo, we’re just gonna magically be healed’. [Laughter]

Sidney: Do you mind if I swap these two things?

Amy: Go for it. [This was not] You had to give yourself an entire segment to rant. 

Sidney: This was not in the original…yes. This is not the original plan for this episode, but I think we need to play The Patronus Game with this Patronus. [Laughter]

Amy:  AKA, Sidney wants a designated section so that she can rant about the black and white cat. [Laughter]

Sidney: I think I said what I needed to say. [Laughter]

[🎶Should this animal really be a guardian? Find out on the Patron Game.🎶]

Sidney: We have talked before about how some of the implications of the different Patronuses on this list are really weird and don’t seem thought through. This being one of the official Patronuses you can get is just really strange because it’s not a breed, it’s not a species, it’s an animal and a certain coloration of that animal [Yeah]. 

Imagine if we said a black dog, like… That’s really vague, isn’t it? What kind of dog? Hmmmmm?! What kind of dog, Joanne? [Laughter] What kind of dog is Sirius Black? I don’t know. We can’t make any inferences about what it actually means if all we have is the coloration. 

It’s not a breed. It’s not a species. It’s not anything that tells us anything. We have to ask, how can we even tell color from a Patronus? And I know we’ve talked about that before, but it still doesn’t make sense.

Amy: It could be any bi-colored cat. [Yes!] Not black and white. It could be brown. It could be grey and white. Who could tell? No one would know.

Sidney: Who could tell? Because we know that Patronuses are not solid looking creatures with their real life colors. We know that they are sort of a silvery, bluish color. 

And how can you tell if it’s a black and white cat? Why is this on the list? So should it really be a Patronus? Does it make sense as a Patronus? I say no!

Carolyn: I would argue that it should at least be its own breed of something to be a Patronus, so I’m gonna vote. I agree with you. No.

Amy: I say no as well because think about how many cat breeds there are in the world. [M[hmm] We could have put it on this list instead and it would have been way more interesting because it’s a specific cat breed that has its own, actual distinct features and you don’t have so much variation in it.

Sidney: Yes, and like Carolyn was saying, if we’re just doing it based on color, then we get into that overlap with every creature that’s black and white color means [M-hmm] the same thing. 

It means duality, good and evil. They can’t all mean the same thing. You know, [Right] a black and white cat cannot mean the exact same thing as a black and white horse.

Amy: Right.

Carolyn: Yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at with it.

Sidney: Does this Patronus deserve to be on the list? No.

Amy: No.

Carolyn: I vote no. Yeah. I don’t even think… I mean, there are creatures that got left off the list that were like, why aren’t they on there? 

Amy: Right.

Sidney: They could have made space for some of those. Could have made space for some Australian animals. [Laughter]

Amy: We could have had the platypus.

Sidney: We could have had the platypus!

Carolyn: We could have had any of the creatures from Australia. They’re all out to kill people anyway. They might as well defend us. [Laughter]

Amy: That’s right. 

Sidney: So Carolyn, do you think that this is the cat? Is it the cat? Is this McGonagall’s Patronus or Umbridge’s Patronus?

[🎶Could this Patronus belong to Delores Umbridge or Professor McGonagall? Find out on, Is this the Cat?🎶] 

Carolyn: I said no because again, I go it’s not even its own breed so.

Sidney: It’s not worth our time to discuss.

Amy: We don’t even know enough about it. Like how would we…

Sidney: But Amy, we know so much about it. It’s bi-colored. It means the duality of good and evil. [Laughter] It means the universe is ambivalent to you. 

Amy: Yeahhhh. 

Sidney: I’m fine. This is fine. It totally makes sense on this list.

Amy: It’s all fine. [Laughter]

Carolyn: Sure, sure, sure it does. Its pop culture references don’t even match up.

Sidney: We’re going to wrap up this episode, but join us next week when we talk about the relationship between Death Eaters and Patronuses. 

It should be a very fun and interesting episode. In the meantime, you can find us on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram at ExpectoPatronum on Twitter at ExpectoPod on Patreon at patreon.com/ExpectoPatronum. 

We would love to hear from you, so send a Patronus to any of these social media outlets or email us at ExpectoPodtronum@gmail.com or leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.

Amy: Alright, until next time, I’m Amy.

Carolyn: I’m Carolyn.

Sidney: And I’m Sidney, and remember, a piece of chocolate a day will keep the Dementors away.

“Food Show” by Music_For_Videos, Anastasia Kir — “Movie Score A” by DHy-Nez, Denita Smith — “Excuse me Cat” by geoffharvey, Geoff Harvey — “The Classical” by Music_For_Videos, Anastasia Kir — “Uplifting Celebration” by makesoundmusic, Mike Kripak — “Mysterious Music: Light Mystical Background Music for Short Video/Vlog” by White Records, Maksym Dudchyk — “Telling the Story” by goeffharvey, Geoff Harvey