Cat eye eyeliner influenced by ancient Egyptian cat statues

Image: MikeB

Well, something entirely different for me and something I knew nothing about until I thought about it while preparing this post (for the first time). But there seems to be a trend on the Internet which is that women like cat eyes and they want their eyes to look like the eyes of a cat. You can do this with plastic surgery. I have seen that. And you can achieve it with eyeliner and make up. That was about the sum total of my knowledge on this topic! But I now feel that cat eye eyeliner is influenced by ancient Egyptians.

Cats in Ancient Egypt – not what you think it was like.

Real cat eye is more rounded but this cat does look like they are wearing eyeliner!. Image: MikeB

Perhaps the bigger topic is what do cat eyes look like? Clearly this makeup artist and the woman involved believe that cat eyes slope upwards at the far end. That is what the make-up achieves. They seem to be elongated with sharp pointed ends left and right. I don't see this with cat eyes by the way. I've seen lots of domestic cat eyes and this is not what they look like! So, this is a human perception. Perhaps the phrase "cat eye" is simply a description of a certain type of human eye appearance which appeals to some women but one which is not actually in truth linked to the eyes of domestic or wild cats.

Online news media say that "many women have a love-hate relationship with winged eyeliner". It looks fierce. Perhaps it is the fierceness which is the link to cats! The phrase is "winged eyeliner". It is the eyeliner at the far end of the eyes as I've mentioned which elongates the eye and turns the end upwards slightly. 

There is a reference here to the era of ancient Egypt and Cleopatra and Nefertiti! That's where the origin of this eyeliner comes from, I think. And I've now got a clearer picture about this. The ancient Egyptians loved their cats. They worship them through cat gods.

We have the filmic rendition of cat eyes in many films. I'm thinking of the Cleopatra film. The trend for cat eyes is not based upon the real domestic cat eye but upon the statues of cats of ancient Egypt. That's my assessment.

Correction!? Here is a photo from Ukraine of a cat with 'cat eyes'. 

Picture: Defense of Ukraine. It is Vyshyvanka Day in Ukraine today May 19th, 2023.

Tell me what you think. I'd love to hear from you.

If cats were human, they could be declared legally blind. True or false?

Answer: false in my view but we don't really know. If you are a human, living in the UK and perhaps elsewhere, you will be declared legally blind if your vision is 20/200 which means that if an object is 200 feet away you have to stand 20 feet from it in order to see it clearly.

Under daylight conditions, domestic cat eyesight is less good than humans'. However, under dusk and night time conditions it is better I would argue. Domestic cat eyes have evolved, as you know, to see under dusky conditions because that is when prey animals are around.

I was one of the first web owners to produce a pictorial comparison between domestic cat and human eyesight. Other websites have followed since. You can see that page by clicking on the link below:

Cat Vision Pictorial Examples

Two of the image comparisons are below.

How domestic cats see by MikeB

How domestic cats see by MikeB

What colors do cats see? Cat see colours pretty well but it believed they are colorblind to red or red/green (brown). The picture above is intended to replicate this color blindness. However, cats have superior eyesight in other respects which you can read about on the page linked to above the image.

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The problem with deciding if domestic cats will be declared legally blind by human standards is that you can't really apply human standards to domestic cats. You hardly ever can.

Also, despite preparing a pictorial example of comparison we don't really know exactly how domestic cat see the world. We have a good idea but we don't know precisely how they see it.

In my considered opinion, they would not be declared legally blind partly because their eyesight is so good at night. And their field of vision is wider than that of humans.

Cat Field of Vision Compared to Human. Image: PoC.

The big problem with domestic cat eyesight is that they see colours less well than humans and the image is a bit softer.

They say that a dog's eyesight is a little better than that of cats.

I think we can probably argue that overall a domestic cat's eyesight is less good than that of humans because some of their other senses are superior to make up for this slight deficiency. They have a better sense of smell and better hearing.

Domestic cats use their sense of smell to identify objects and they can locate prey animals with their hearing very precisely. These senses compensate and when a cat's senses are bundled together, they are certainly equipped to the same level as humans.

Why are a cat's eyes always dilated?

The first important point to note is that the question asks why a cat's eyes are ALWAYS dilated. In other words, this is a permanent state of affairs. In this state of affairs, the irises do not contract to a narrow pupil but there are always wide open with a big circular black orb for the eye and almost no visible iris.

Dilated pupils of a cat.

The second point to note is that the muscles of the iris contract to allow much less light through the pupil on a bright day. And they relax to let in more light when the conditions are dark. There is a 135 times difference in the amount of light that the iris allows to pass into the eye between wide open and closed to a slit.

The nerves of the retina send a signal to the brain which sends another signal to the irises to relax or contract depending upon the light conditions.

If the retina is malfunctioning and not able to convert light into an image the brain receives a signal that the light conditions are dim and then directs the iris to open up to allow more light in to the eye.

And if the retina no longer works at all due to a disease such as progressive retinal atrophy or retinitis, then there will be a permanent signal to the brain to say that no light is being received and therefore the brain tells the iris to remain permanently wide open; the muscles of the iris are completely relaxed. Like a camera lens the iris is not going to be 'stopped down'. This, as stated, is a permanent state of affairs.

And behind this situation is a retina which is either malfunctioning or is no longer functioning. And therefore, if they cat's eyes are always dilated, in my view, it means that the cat's retina is malfunctioning and the cat is functionally either going blind or blind.

Progressive retinal atrophy is a gradual degeneration of the retinal cells. This is a disease that is inherited in certain breeds such as Persians, Abyssinians and possibly Siamese. It is caused by an autosomal recessive mutated gene as I understand it. There is no treatment.

Retinitis is a disease in which inflammation of the retina leads to degeneration and destruction of the light respecting cells in the retina. It may occur because of hypertension or perhaps an eye injury or for unknown reasons. High blood pressure or hypertension is one of the most common causes of retinitis. And hypertension is usually associated with hyperthyroidism and/or renal failure.

RELATED: Different pupil size in a cat's eyes - time to visit a vet.

Retinitis is also associated with feline infectious peritonitis, lymphoma, cryptococcosis, feline infectious peritonitis and toxoplasmosis. These are the underlying diseases which can lead to damage to the retina which in turn these to the eyes always being dilated.

It is normal for the eyes of a person or a cat to dilate from time to time when conditions are dark but in my view, they should not be dilated all the time. Something is wrong and a veterinarian needs to be consulted.

Sectoral heterochromia in an all-white cat

This is called sectoral heterochromia. It is rare and beautiful. No health issues. You do see it in domestic cats. The cat is all-white. It is the dominant white gene which affects eye pigmentation creation in the embryonic stage. It causes the removal of melanin pigment across a part of the iris. The blue color is caused by light refraction only (not blue pigment). The yellow by pigment (eumelanin). All-white cats have no pigment in the hair strands. This is why they can get sunburnt ears - no pigment to block sun and in any case the hairs are thin there.

The normal, most common, sort of heterochromia in cats is when they have odd-eyes. One eye is blue and the other is yellow normally. But there are various types of heterochromia and the one we see on this page is called sectoral heterochromia because each eye is divided up into two colours i.e. there are two sections to the eyes. Turkish Angoras sometimes have odd-eyes and they are favoured. They are often all-white cats too. The classic real Turkish Angora is all-white with odd-eye colour.

The cat below looks a bit like an Angora but is not to the best of my knowledge.

Sectoral heterochromia in an all-white cat. Photo: Reddit.com.

Cat's Eye Nebula is a celebration of cat's eyes

There is a nebula in space, millions of light years away, which is called the Cat's Eye Nebula. It is a beautiful, gaseous object that was first discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786. Although it is difficult to measure its distance from Earth, it is believed to be 3300 light years away. This means it would take 3300 years to travel to the nebula when travelling at the speed of light which is 186,000 mi/s or 300,000 km/s. The photograph is a composite image of three different images taken at different wavelengths. The images were taken by the Wide Field Planetary Camera-2.

Cat's Eye Nebula. Photo: Wikipedia under CC license.

Surprisingly to me, it's estimated age is believed to be 1000 years ± 260 years.

Turning to cats! The domestic cat's eye is a beautiful object. There are two perhaps four things that come to mind, immediately. Firstly, we all know that there is a reflective layer behind the retina which directs light back onto the retina which in turn enhances the eye's ability to detect objects in low light conditions. The cat's eye also has a preponderance of rods over cones which are designed to detect light under difficult conditions and produce a black-and-white image. Thirdly, a kitten's eyes have no colour or pigmentation in the iris and are therefore blue due to the refraction of daylight through the eye. Fourthly, in the cat fancy, breed standards dictate the colour of the eyes of any one cat breed. They may be a wide selection to choose from but sometimes they have to be just one colour such as for the Russian Blue whose eyes have to be vivid green.

Russian Blue vivid green eye colour per breed standard. Pic: in public domain.

Video of tabby cat with bright emerald eyes

This is a video on Reddit.com of a tabby cat with the most astonishing emerald eyes. Initially when I saw a still image of the cat (and not the video) I thought that this was an example of excellent photo-editing. But can you photo-edit video material like this? I think you can because I just can't bring myself to believe that this eye colour is genuine.

Update: the video failed. They always do from Reddit. They are hopeless on embedded videos. So hopeless that I think they deliberately make them fail. But if you click here you can see it on Reddit (hopefully).

Here is a screenshot from the video:

Tabby cat with bright emerald eyes. Screenshot.

But, you know, I could be wrong. It could be genuine. I'd love someone to tell me that I am wrong in a comment. Amazing cat. He/she should have an Instagram page. I can't find a page on Instagram which features this cat. Is that proof that the eyes are too special to be real?

Why cat hiccups dilates the eye's pupil

Cats' eyes dilate when they hiccup. pic.twitter.com/9eAQ5h06iQ

— Science is Amazing (@AMAZlNGSCIENCE) November 19, 2020

This is an embedded video and sometimes they stop working overtime. If that has happened I apologise but I have no control over it.

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This is an interesting little video which repeats itself. I am sure that it has been all over the Internet. However, I have just spotted it. The cat hiccups and immediately afterwards the pupil of the cat's eye opens slightly because the muscles of the iris relax. That is my theory. The pupil of the cat's eye is made smaller when the muscles of the iris are contracted. It requires muscular effort for the pupil to be in a contracted state. When the cat hiccups the purposefulness of that process of contracting the muscles of the iris is temporarily stopped as the hiccups distract the brain. Therefore the pupil enlarges and the eye becomes more dilated. That of course is a personal theory which I simply worked out because you cannot find the answer on the Internet. It makes for an interesting little video on a different level namely that you can see how the iris works and the pupil forms a slit. This slit pupil is very important to the domestic cat because it allows the animal to see in bright light and in extremely dark conditions as well. The slit aperture of the cat's pupil work sin harmony with the cat's eyelid which goes over the slit like a blind at the window of a person's home. The slight pupil also enhances a cat's depth perception.

Siamese Cat Sapphire Blue Eyes

The Siamese cat should have "brilliant sapphire blue", eyes (Gloria Stephens). Here is a nice picture by Flickr photographer by thelittleone417 of those sapphire blue eyes. I don't know if this cat is purebred or not but the eyes are pretty damn good: