Boy adopts rescue cat with the same odd eye colour and cleft lip as himself

There is a nice symmetry in this relationship. The boy was bullied at school because of his cleft lip and odd-eye colour but he found his soul mate in a bicolour cat - grey tabby and white. The piebald gene causes the bicolor coat and that gene made one of the cat's eyes blue and the other yellow. And as it happens the cat has a cleft lip. Both of these conditions are fairly rare in cats.

Heterochromia iridium is the scientific name for on-eye colour. It was probably inherited by the boy although it might have been caused by trauma. For the cat, it was also inherited because the cat inherited the piebald or white spotting gene which gives him his coat and his odd-eye colour.

The boy's cleft lip is inherited as well. It may be a genetic mutation and deficiency or it might have been something that the mother came into contact with in her environment or what she ate or drink or the medications that she took during pregnancy.

This is obviously a great relationship because both the boy and the cat benefit tremendously from it. The boy can mentally process the fact that he was bullied by interacting with his cat. He can find solace there and some comfort. And of course, the cat will benefit tremendously as well.

It is possible to operate on a cat with a cleft lip. The boy has already undergone that operation quite clearly. I remember funding a cleft lip operation of a cat in Malta. The cat was rescued by a charming woman, Martha Kane, and she didn't have the money to pay for an operation so I used monies acquired through advertising on my website to pay for the operation. I'm proud of that. Although I forget about it most of the time and it has just come to my mind while writing this article.

Extraordinary totally white dog with a solid black head (video)

Screenshot.

Get this. Very unusual. In cat fancy language the distribution of white and black fur is due to the white spotting gene. It is probably the same for dogs.

RELATED: 

Father and daughter 'wear' the same 'mask'

My reading of the genetics behind this father and daughter cat looking as they do (very cute and very rare) is that they have the white spotting gene or piebald gene in their genetic makeup and it has caused this highly unusual Zorro mask to develop. I guess it is just by chance that the white spotting gene had this effect upon the way the pattern developed. I don't think that there is any special genetic mutation going on here.

Screenshot.

The white spotting gene normally simply results in a standard bicolour cat. These two are bicolour cats but the markings are remarkable. Normally the markings are just black-and-white blobs or a white background with markings being created by darker coloured fur. An example of a bicolour cat is the Harlequin. I have a page on bicolor cats. Please click on the link below.

Solid and white cat coats.

Cat coats: solid-and-white - bicolor cats

Cat Coats Solid and White - Bicolor - photo copyright fofurasfelinas

This is another posting on cat coats. This time I discuss the impact of the white spotting gene on "solid" colored cats other than Tuxedo cats, which I have already discussed on this page. Tuxedo cats are very common and specific in their coat pattern so I've dealt with them separately. Both are bicolor cats meaning a cat coat of two colours, white and another solid colour.

Bicolour development - white spotting gene. Image: Sarah Hartwell.

The particular effect that the white spotting gene has on any one cat dictates the spread of white fur on the cat (or put it another way it restricts the spread of color). The cat fancy has given names to the patterns caused by this gene, which by the way is also called the piebald gene. It is considered a "semi-dominant" gene.

Bicolour faces white spotting gene. Image in public domain.

White spotted cats are one of the most common cats. The white spotting gene (represented by the letter "S" in the science of genetics) can change the appearance of any colored cat including tabby cats or tortoiseshell cats or a combination of the two (torbie). [See cat coats tortie and white]. When it affects a tortoiseshell cat, the cat is called a calico cat in the States.

Bicolours. The chart is by Sarah Hartwell of messybeast. Many thanks.

RELATED PAGE: White spotting gene charts.

A fine example of a cat with a solid and white coat is the Turkish Van (high grade spotting - see below). This has, of course, the "Van" pattern. Van is a town in the South east of Turkey, where the Turkish Van originally came from (including adjacent regions).

Another example of a well-known cat breed with a "solid and white coat" is the Japanese Bobtail. The Japanese Bobtail has a Bicolor pattern in both "solid and white" and calico (which is tortoiseshell and white mentioned above).

Bicolor cat photo by tanakawho (this photographer is well known - see more of his work here plus the work of 2 other fine photographers). Picture reproduced here under a creative commons license.

I discuss, in brief, the workings of the piebald gene on the Tuxedo cat page as well as here. The effects of the piebald gene can be seen to varying degrees. The amount of white dictates whether the pattern is a grade 9 (almost total white with the colored fur limited to a few spots). This is called high grade spotting.

At the other end of the spectrum at grade 1 there is a very small amount of white. This is called low grade spotting. When the cat is low grade the genotype (genetic makeup in relation to the cat's coat) is normally heterozygous represented by the letters "Ss". Conversely when the coat is high grade (lots of white) a spotted cat is generally homozygous "SS".

Black and white bicolor Scottish Fold kitten from Russia (Siberia). Photo (excellent):  Анатолий Кузнецов.

The presence of the piebald gene results in white fur by causing special embryonic cells to behave in a defective manner. These cells are called "Melanoblasts" and they become the cells of the cats body that produce the granules of pigmentation that are embedded in the individual hairs. During the embryonic stage these cells migrate from the spine area. They fail to migrate properly and fully causing parts of the body to be without color. The wide variability of the effect of this gene is due, at least in part, to the presence of other unidentified genes called "polygenes".

The great Dr. Desmond Morris discusses bi-colour cats in his book Cat World. He tells us that such patterns are most common in non-pedigree cats. But of course, you will see this coat type in pedigree cats as well. It depends on the breed standard is to whether they are allowed or not. In the early days of the cat fancy the bi-colour cat was less likely to be accepted because they felt that they made a pure-bred animal look like a moggy.

This was prejudice against the coat but it was more likely to be accepted if there was some sort of distinguishing factors about the bicolour coat such as an attractive symmetry or the distribution of the colour was interesting.

In the early days of the cat fancy the black-and-white coat was referred to as a 'magpie cat'. And sometimes the bicolour cat is called a parti-colored cat. You will see "parti-colored" spelled in different ways. Apparently bicolour cats only attained championship status within the show cat fraternity in 1966.

You will see bicolour cats in longhaired and shorthaired cats and in many cat breeds such as the American Shorthair, British Shorthair, Devon Rex, Cornish Rex, Japanese bobtail, Maine Coon, Manx and Persians. These are just examples. There are others.

Here are some photographs of the solid and white coat pattern:

Cream and white - photo:
copyright Helmi Flick

Cat Coats Solid and White - Turkish Van - Photograph copyright Lazy_Lightning


Cat Coats Solid and White - Black and White Van pattern with a lot of white (grade 8 perhaps) - photograph copyright Helmi Flick.


Black with white (more than a Tuxedo). Photograph copyright Helmi Flick.

Cat Coats Solid and White - This is another black-and-white cat (hairless cat). This demonstrates how the white spotting gene affects the skin color as well. Perhaps more accurately it is the almost invisible downy hair strands near the skin which are pigmented.

RELATED: Picture of calico Sphynx cat.

Perhaps a more accurate description for this cat, a Sphynx Cat (or Sphynx-like cat) would be Black and Pink! Photograph copyright Helmi Flick.

Cat Coats Solid and White - Sources:

• Beth Hicks
• Messybeast - Sarah Hartwell

From Cat Coats Solid and White to Cat Facts

Can cats be piebald?

Yes, cats can be piebald. In fact, they are very common. They are referred to as 'bicolour cats' or cats with a 'solid-and-white' coat. But the cat below is not common. Not by any stretch of the imagination. This cat is amazing. I think this rare cat is a piebald but a rare pattern.

Very unusual, in fact strange, piebald coat. Photo: Facebook

The word piebald is an amalgam of 'pie' from magpie (a black-and-white i.e. two coloured bird) and 'bald' meaning a bald or white patch.

Unsurprisingly the gene that causes the piebald or bicolor coat is called the piebald gene. It is also referred to as the white spotting gene.

People ask if cats can be piebald because we are far more familiar with the word being used to describe a horse. You'll see the piebald coat pattern on many animals including dogs too.

The location of the white fur and how it migrates during development of the cat in the womb is governed by the piebald gene and how it operates on the migration of the melanoblasts from the neural crest to paired bilateral locations in the skin of the embryo.

Strange bicolor cat. Photo: Facebook

Sometimes the gene causes cats to be deaf and sometimes one eye may also have no pigment in the iris causing it to be blue. Blue eyes are caused by white light refraction and not pigmentation.

There is an amazing mainly white bicolour cat on the internet (see photo above). I have just written about her. She is very rare. But she is a piebald cat in my opinion although the pattern is incredibly unusual. There may be a polygene effect (multi-genes working together).

This is my late female cat.  A black-and-white. I loved her deeply.
Photo: MikeB

The coat looks genuine by which I mean the photo is not edited or the cat is not dyed. Yes, some people do dye their cats to make waves on social media.

Cat Hair: White Is the Absence Of Pigment

For a cat and perhaps for other creatures white is the absence of pigmentation in the hair strands. The hair is not white because there is white pigmentation in the hair.  There is no pigmentation in the hair strands.  In short, white is the absence of colour in this instance whereas in an absolute sense white is the merging of all the colours of the visible spectrum. I think that's quite a nice contrast.

Natalie - a non-pedigree show cat. Photo copyright Helmi Flick.

You would have thought that if there is no pigmentation in each hair strand, each strand of hair would be transparent but clearly not.  Therefore, the un-pigmented hair strand must be white or opaque to a certain extent and very light in colour.

The reason why there is no pigment in the hair of white cats is because cells which are created very early on during the develop of the foetus inside the womb called melanoblasts - which turn into melanocytes (which are pigment producing cells) - do not migrate from their point of origin to the hair shaft.  The point of origin of melanoblasts is the trunk neural crest cells.

The reason why this migration does not take place is because of the white cat carries the white spotting gene or the dominant white gene.  In these cats the migration is partly or completely halted.

Because the cell in the skin in which the hair strand is embedded is unable to produce pigment (eumelanin and phaeomelanin) there is no pigment inside the hair strand; it looks white.

The white spotting gene is also called the piebald gene and it creates the bicolour cat (white and another color). These genes can cause deafness and odd-eye color.

Loud Deaf White Cats

Totally white cats are often deaf. Harrison Weir, the founder of the cat fancy in the late 1800s says that if a short haired or long haired white cat has blue eyes, "these are nearly always deaf" (you can read about the percentages in 2012 on this page). He bought a gorgeous white long haired cat at one of the early cat shows that he set up.

He was surprised at the price: 2 guineas. A guinea was always made of gold and the value fixed at 21 shillings (one pound and one shilling). We are talking about old English money of course as this is in the 1870s. That was very cheap, Mr Weir thought. He could not believe the price. The cat was in a cage.."it was a beauty - so comely, so loving, so gentle - so very gentle".

He checked the price was correct. He bought the cat. He had no idea that this beautiful pure white long haired cat was stone deaf. When he got home (to what seems like a palatial residence!) he kept the cat out of the dinning room for some reason. He then discovered why his new cat companion was so cheap to purchase.

The cat's voice was so loud in calling to be let out that it drove him crazy. When he went outside with this cat (he had several) and the cat lost sight of him he called out. Mr Weir says, "I feel confident that it might have been heard miles off".

Luckily, a friend took a fancy to the cat. He allowed the friend to take the cat home. Note: the friend was told that the cat was stone deaf but not that he had a voice that made you deaf!

His friend's home was miles and miles away! A few days later his friend had written to him asking if he would like to take the cat back.....No!

His friend found a solution. He gave this handsome yet very loud white cat to a deaf women.

The question that I have in May 2012, is, "have you had any experiences of deaf cats having very loud voices?" We know that if a person can't hear their voice because they are deaf it affects the quality of their voice. Do deaf cats have loud voices because they can't hear their voices?

I think it is certainly something to think about if you want to adopt a white cat and you live in an apartment. My personal view is that perhaps some deaf cats might have louder than usual voices. Mr Weir says that "in buying a white cat...ascertain for a certainty that it is not deaf".

Associated: read why a lot of white cats are deaf.

Cat White Spotting Gene

The cat white spotting gene is also called the piebald gene and it is not limited to cats i.e. it is the "white spotting gene". The piebald horse or painted horse is perhaps the classic example of its effect. These are bicolor horses and the bicolor cat is a very well known cat. The calico cat also carries the white spotting gene.

The white spotting gene works with any color so you will see black and white cats, tuxedo cats, calico cats (white, orange and black), tabby and white cats, grey and white cats etc. All of then carry the white spotting gene. Solid and white cats are bicolor.

The amount of white fur is very variable. The tuxedo black and white cat has a limited amount of white fur on the chest and lower limbs, while the Turkish Van is almost all white with the classic inverted "V" on the forehead and around the ears and a pigmented tail.

Sarah Hartwell kindly licensed her diagram of the various levels of expression of the piebald white spotting gene:

The "grading" of the degree of white is as follows: the more white the higher the grading. So the Turkish Van has high grade spotting. The tuxedo cat has low grade spotting.

Medium grade spotting refers to a body that is 40-60% white.

The genetic symbol for the white spotting gene is S. It is semi-dominant in its operation.

• Ss - one dominant and one recessive allele -  white spotted cats that are heterozygotes. These are low grade and some medium grade white spotted cats.
• All high grade spotted cats are homozygotes SS.

It is thought that the gene causes a defect in the migration of the embryonic cells called melanocytes. These cells produce the melanin pigmentation that colors hair strands. The cells fail to migrate properly to their usual positions during embryonic development and so the pigmentation for the hair strands is not formed resulting in white fur at these positions.

Top picture (copyright Helmi Flick) shows a Turkish Van high grade white spotting and the lower picture shows a low grade white spotting black and white random bred cat (a pretty and healthy looking cat). See also the piebald gene - the same gene.