Are All White Cats With Blue Eyes Deaf

Some of these cats are deaf in only one ear.

Are all white cats with blue eyes deaf. Thus deafness is strongly linked to the white coat colour and blue eye colour but not all white cats or white cats with blue eyes are necessarily deaf. So why do all-white cats born with blue eyes experience deafness. Unilateral and bilateral combined of 85 and 649 in cats with two blue eyes 40 and 391 in cats with one blue eye and 167 and 22 in cats with no blue eyes.

White cats with blue eyes are more likely to be deaf however than white cats with gold or green eyes. Not all blue-eyed white cats are deaf but many of them are. The variable penetrance of deafness and eye colour may be caused by interplay with other genes andor environmental factors.

The mech-anism of inheritance of deafness in white cats has not been. 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. In the cat world white cats with blue eyes are very special kitties.

And 65 to 85 percent of white cats with two blue eyes were deaf. As we have mentioned previously not all white cats with blue eyes are prone to deafness. For years people believed that white cats are born with blue eyes and deaf.

Of white cats with one blue eye about 40 percent are deaf in at least one ear. The white spotting gene and albino gene can also produce white cats with pink blue yellow or green eyes. Hereditary deafness is a major concern in white cats and even more so if one or both irises are blue in color.

The good news is a white cat is not prone to blindness. However not all white coat cats have blue eyes. 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 right ear and vice versa.