Cat With Rare Condition Changes Colors In Front Of Her Owner's Eyes

[catbyte]

"Her changing still goes on every day, and I love her more and more."

By Stephen Messenger

A few years ago, when Nicole Böhm rescued a pair of black-and-white kitten siblings living on a dirty farm in Germany, she had no idea that one of the cats would eventually go on to ditch her traditional look for one a bit more interesting.

But that's exactly what Elli did.



"She had a tuxedo coat like her sister. Nothing unusual," Böhm told The Dodo. "The changing began about one year after birth."



One day, Böhm noticed something strange on Elli's coat. There, where her fur was once solid black, a few flecks of white hair had appeared.

"It was just a little white spot on her back," Böhm said. "I didn't know why, so I took her to the vet."

Turns out, Elli was diagnosed as having vitiligo — a rare condition which causes a loss of pigmentation, leading to white patches of skin and hair. Though it's sometimes linked to other medical issues, Elli was otherwise totally healthy.

But what began as a few patches of white on Elli's body soon increased into something uniquely beautiful.

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For Böhm, seeing her rescued cat's adorable transformation has made sharing a life with her all the more delightful.

"Her changing still goes on every day, and I love her more and more," she said.



https://www.thedodo.com/close-to-home/rare-cat-changes-colors-elli-vitiligo

[lunatica]

1. Fascinating!

[catbyte]

2. There's a model with vitiglio. It's always symmetrical, quite striking & beautiful:

Winnie Harlow:

[saidsimplesimon]

5. She owns the look.

A beautiful woman

[TexasBushwhacker]

7. Michael Jackson had it

He opted to just bleach all of his skin white, rather than be blotchy.

[KT2000]

3. OK - does this mean

when the black hair sheds, the replacement is white? If so, good lesson in shedding.
Love her face markings!

[LakeArenal]

4. Nature is Very cool.

[KatyaR]

6. She looks like she has owl eyes!

What a beautiful girl.

[csziggy]

8. I didn't know that cats had a graying gene, too

Horses like the famous white stallions or Lipizanners that appear white as adults are really born with various colors and "gray" out as they mature. I've had horses that had "slow gray" and "fast gray" genes - some will be almost completely white by the time they are two or three, others don't gray out completely until they are four or five years old while some never turn completely white but are what are known as "flea- bitten grays" and have little dots of (usually) brown hair.

I bred a couple of gray horses - at birth they had white "eyebrows" and that is how we knew that they would turn color as they age. One was a dark bay at birth and a mounted police unit wanted to buy him - but all their horses were dark bay and I had to tell them he would not stay that color.

Since I was breeding for color - dun and grulla - I learned a lot about color genetics in horses. The colors I was breeding for are the result of a mutation of the albino gene - and it is the same dilution gene that produces Siamese in cats. The horses are lighter versions of the underlying color and doubling up of that gene can cause some odd colors.

The true albino gene is fatal in horses so none survive. There is a breed called the American Cream that is really a very pale gold color, not white. The American Cream is actually an expression of the champagne gene which is also a doubling of the same dilution gene that shows up in dun, grulla, and buckskin horses - and in palominos.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. Siamese cats do that in reverse. As they get older their fur gets darker.

Technically they are temperature-sensitive albinos; the parts of their bodies that are cooler (paws, tails, ears) are darker. As the cat gets older its skin temperature drops a little and the fur on its body also starts to darken. https://www.catster.com/lifestyle/cat-facts-genes-siamese-cats-temperature-sensitive-albino

[csziggy]

10. Oh, don't I know it - I've had several Siamese cross cats

My current kitty was almost white when I adopted him at about five weeks old, just a little shading on his points. As he matured swirls showed up on his sides and he has darkened a lot. Now he just looks like an oddly light tabby instead of a tabby point Siamese!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. I've got one, too. She was mostly white as a kitten

but now she's got a big brown patch all across her back that didn't used to be there at all. Your cat is really pretty!

[Fla Dem]

12. That's amazing and she's beautiful!!

[diane in sf]

13. I had a kitty who had short dark hair on his points and long white fur on the rest of his coat.

He was very striking. As he grew out of kittenhood, the long white fur turned rusty black and his points stayed short and dark. He had two sibs who did the same. I suspect Siamese and Persian/some kind of long hair components in his ancestry.

[ellie]

14. Kitteh!

So beautiful. I miss my kitties.