Your Maine Coon Guide

This is a report in layman's terms of congenital sensorineural deafness (CSD) in white blue-eyed cats of various breeds including the Maine Coon cat. The word 'sensorineural' refers to the nervous system transmitting sound signals from the ears to the brain to perceive sound. CSD concerns a defect that a cat is born with affecting the nerves that transmit sound to the brain. It is the dominant white gene (W) which can damage the hearing of cats. RELATED:  Why are domestic cats white ? Good chance of suffering from CSD. Image now in the public domain. In all, 122 white purebred kittens and 61 coloured kittens between the ages of 6-21 weeks were examined. The occurrence of CSD in solid white kittens overall was 30.3% with deafness in both ears at 15.9% and deafness in one ear at 14.4% (unilateral). Deafness was more common in white kittens with blue irises. When the kitten had one blue iris the occurrence of deafness was at 44.4%. When both eyes had blue irises the occurrenc...

I recently wrote about white cats being bad mothers ! The reasoning is straightforward: white cats are often deaf and being deaf they cannot respond in a timely way to their kitten's cries for attention. This is a barrier to being a good mother. And my mind turned to a photograph by Helmi Flick, a very well-known American show cat photographer, of a white Maine Coon cat. As I recall it was one of her first assignments as a professional cat photographer. She peached it and got a great result. It is as if the cat is floating like a cloud against a deep blue sky. She used an Olympus camera. She uses Canon nowadays or did. She lives in Fort Worth metroplex, Dallas, Texas. I'm told that this cat was or is (if still alive) deaf. That would have to be expected. The chances of being deaf depends upon whether the cat has two blue eyes, odd-eyes i.e. one yellow and one blue or both yellow.  A high proportion of all-white cats with two blue eyes will be deaf because the cochlea of the inn...