White Cats With Blue Eyes Deaf
The reason is the aforementioned W genotype.
White cats with blue eyes deaf. 25 of white cats with yellow eyes have normal hearing. The uphill road to solving polygenic disorders The pure white cat with luminous blue eyes is an attrac-tive image familiar to many. Furthermore if a cat has one blue eye and one green the ear on the side of the blue eye is more likely to be deaf than the other.
These cats are three to five times more likely to be deaf than white cats with non-blue eyes. Statistically white cats with blue eyes with congenital deafness make up around 1 to 15 of the total cat population. White cats have always aroused curiosity in humans.
However this color defect is also responsible for affecting the thin lining on the inner ear essential for your cats hearing. However the prevalence of white cats does vary in different geographies. And if the white cat has a different eye color for each eye heterochromia it will be deaf on the side where it has the blue eye.
Deafness in white cats with blue eyes is a form of congenital deafness medically known as unilateral or bilateral congenital sensorineural deafness. Strangely blue eye white cats tend to be deaf even more than others. Interestingly if a white cat with one blue eye is deaf in only one ear that ear will invariably be on the same side of the head as the blue eye.
A survey of 185 white cats reported the following results. If a white cat has 2 blue eyes it is 3-5 times more likely to be deaf than a cat with 2 non-blue eyes and a cat with 1 blue eye is about twice as likely to be deaf as a cat with 2 non-blue eyes. Can a cat with blue eyes be deaf.
That ocean deep eye color goes perfectly with a smooth white coat. The fact is that hereditary deafness does tend to be a serious concern in white cats. The deaf ear is usually on the same side as the blue eye.