Did you know?
The majority of white cats aren't actually white at all.
Check it out!
White is technically not a color at all, but the lack thereof. A white cat is produced in a number of ways, the rarest of those being a true white cat, or an albino cat. Albino is the complete lack of pigmentation anywhere on the entire cat. These cats are incredibly rare, what usually happens is that the cat's normal color is actually masked.
color masking happens in two ways, by white spotting(piebalding), which is caused by the gene SS, and Dominant white, which is caused by the gene W. White spotting causes the cute mittens or white belly on the cat. In some more extreme cases, white spotting causes a van pattern, or a complete masking of the cat's color over the entire body. Dominant white is like white spotting, except there's nothing restricting it to a certain area like with white spotting, so it just masks everything again.
The cat could really be any color underneath, and if they breed with another cat who wasn't white through masking, none of the kittens will be white. The real downside to it, is that most white cats, whether they be albino or not, can be blind, deaf, or both.
The majority of white cats aren't actually white at all.
Check it out!
White is technically not a color at all, but the lack thereof. A white cat is produced in a number of ways, the rarest of those being a true white cat, or an albino cat. Albino is the complete lack of pigmentation anywhere on the entire cat. These cats are incredibly rare, what usually happens is that the cat's normal color is actually masked.
color masking happens in two ways, by white spotting(piebalding), which is caused by the gene SS, and Dominant white, which is caused by the gene W. White spotting causes the cute mittens or white belly on the cat. In some more extreme cases, white spotting causes a van pattern, or a complete masking of the cat's color over the entire body. Dominant white is like white spotting, except there's nothing restricting it to a certain area like with white spotting, so it just masks everything again.
The cat could really be any color underneath, and if they breed with another cat who wasn't white through masking, none of the kittens will be white. The real downside to it, is that most white cats, whether they be albino or not, can be blind, deaf, or both.