Are Solid White Cats With Blue Eyes Deaf

40 percent of white cats with one blue eye were deaf.

Are solid white cats with blue eyes deaf. Not all white Cats are Deaf. In cats congenital deafness is seen almost exclusively in white coated individuals. You may have heard that white cats are always deaf.

Melanocytes are melanin-producing cells like those in the skin that has to do with color. Some of the cats were deaf in only one ear - interestingly if a cat had a blue eye on the right side of her head she tended to be deaf in the. My vet said they dont have the gene to hear.

Deafness may occur in one ear or both ears and is caused by an absence or abnormality of melanocytes. The reason as you may have guessed is heredity. In solid white and high white cats there is a link to deafness because melanin is involved in the development of the inner ear the part that detects sound vibrations.

First of all it can be said that not all white cats are deaf but they are more likely to be deaf since they carry the so-called gene W White of white in English especially those that have one eye of each color or blue eyes. Black and white cats with blue eyes have a much more common type of hearing and vision problem that may be related to their eye color. But kittens have blue eyes due to a genetic mutation that happens during the development of the embryo.

Another thing about blue-eyed white cats is that they are photophobic. Non-dominant white gene will not mask other colors and give full white coat on cats. Two blue eyes completely deaf.

Studies show that in fact white felines with blue eyes have a higher prevalence of deafness than solid white felines with green or yellow eyes. White color of the coat occurs in cats in the following three ways. Cats who are solid white or mostly white may have blue green gold or copper eyes.