An Oriental shorthair, Olive is a lovely white cat with unusual eyes, a trait not uncommon in white cats. But her eyes are truly an oddity, even amongst white cats. From her pearl face, she gazes upon you with gemstone eyes of sapphire and amber. Not one eye of each color, but from two dual-colored eyes.
Instead of solid-colored eyes of blue or amber, Olive has both. Both of her eyes split their color right down the center, blue on the inside half, amber on the outside.
Olive’s eye color comes from a genetic condition called Sectoral Heterochromia, causing the iris of a single eye to contain two colors. In Olive’s case, the blue and the golden brown. But don’t worry about her health. While the genetic quirk creates the beautiful oddity in her eyes, it hasn’t caused adverse medical problems.
Are white cats with blue eyes deaf?
Pure white cats with blue eyes are often thought to be deaf. In fact, statistics show white cats are rare but not all are deaf. Cats with all-white fur make up less than 5% of the cat population and within that number around 2% have blue eyes.
Cornell Feline Health Center reports of this small percentage, “Researchers found that only 17 to 22 percent of white cats with non-blue eyes are born deaf. The percentage rises to 40 percent if the cat has one blue eye, while upwards of 65 to 85 percent of all-white cats with both eyes blue are deaf.”
