24 August 2006

blue-eyed white cats (redux)

holy jeepers. Mommy went ahead and did some 'tective work and this is what she found by a guy who used to run a "dating service" for kitties. or maybe she said "mating service." hmmmmm. . . anyway (excerpted from White Cats and Deafness,
by Roy Robinson.):
    The association between blue eye colour and deafness is well documented and is shown by Table 2. Cats with blue eyes are more prone to deafness than those with orange eyes. Furthermore, cats with two blue eyes are more likely to be deaf than cats with one blue eye (Table 3). The data is meagre but there is evidence that in doubly unilateral affected individuals, blue eye colour and deafness will occur on the same side of the head.

    The implication of the above observations is the obverse of that for patch and deafness. It is apparent that those cats with two blue eyes are more severely affected than those with one. The former cats could have received fewer functional embryonic neural crest cells than the latter. That is, the extent of the underlying neural crest anomaly may vary and this accounts for the variation of expression of the syndrome.

and here are the tables:

TABLE 2:
Association between blue iris and deafness.

Orange irisBlue iris
Normal hearing4655
Deaf1368
Incidence(%)22.055.3
Chi square = 17.85 for 1 degree of freedom, highly significant.




TABLE 3: Association between number of blue irises and deafness.

Orange iris1 blue iris2 blue irises
Normal hearing463027
Deaf131950
Incidence(%)22.038.864.9
Chi square = 55.00 for 2 degrees of freedom, highly significant.


my little green eyes glazed over after "doubly unilateral affected", and Mommy's soon after. but even though she doesn't understand all the numbers, she does understand persents, and the HIGH persents mean there's a big chance that an all-white cat will be deaf. poor kitties; i was sad then, but Mommy cheered me right up when she reminded me that they are just like me, 'cept only that they can't hear. they cuddle and sniff and like catnip and enjoy stinky goodness and like tummyrubs and play wif fevvers and such. Mommy sez she's sorry if this was boring and was more than you ever wanted to know (it was for her), but i kinda like to know stuff, so here it is.

purrs, xing lu

4 comments:

Louise said...

Love your blog, beautiful cats! Stop by my blog and say 'Hi' sometime: www.tradingcats.blogspot.com

Take care!

Hot(M)BC said...

Oh! I'd learned lots. Fanks!
~~ Sanjee

Anonymous said...

okaaaaaaay. that's a lotta words right there! ya know what's good 'bout deaf kitties? if ya yells at 'em an tells 'em NO or STOP IT, they can't hear ya an so they must be all the way happier!

Victor Tabbycat said...

Mom says, how can you tell if a white cat is deaf or just not listening?! In a past life, she studied hearing (then quit) but that whole "fewer functional embryonic neural crest cells..." furget it! That kinda talk makes my little kitty head asplode.