ERMINE TRACE BLUE-EYED SILVER AND GOLDEN BRITISH SHORTHAIRS

Elizaveta Lipovenko has a spontaneous mutation in her British Shorthairs, producing blue-eyed and odd-eyed chinchilla/silver shaded and tipped golden cats.

Two blue-eyed golden British Shorthairs - Ermine Trace Athens and Ermine Trace Zarafina - both trace their ancestry via Ermine Trace Nadeya to a very blue-eyed chinchilla point male, Shoenwig Teodoro and his mother Schoenwig Mona Lisa, also a very blue-eyed chinchilla point cat. Mona Lisa's mother is Passimilla's Upper Class, also a very blue-eyed chinchilla point cat. It is possible that in selecting for very blue eyes, a gene mutation may have been overlooked. Because pointed cats have blue eyes, it is also possible the mutation could have been hiding in plain sight.

Nadeya's mother, Ermine Trace Olwen, was a green-eyed silver chinchilla, and is distantly related to the Nanotigr cats through Eric von Burgersruh, Olwen's great-grandfather and Oliver's great-great-great-grandfather. Nadeya's father, Schoenweg Teodoro, is related to the parents of Eric von Burgersruh - Nanook's Silver Ascot and Jenevieva Sarsen Stones – though all of these are green-eyed.

It is not certain what the homozygotes of this gene look like. It is suspected they either do not develop, or they stop developing very early and are resorbed. Despite a number of matings of DBE-to-DBE, there have been no kittens wholly white (like homozygotes in the Cyrridwen line derived from Maryusa) or with high white (like Altai homozygotes and those derived from Seymour). Litter sizes for DBE-to-DBE matings are smaller than DBE-to-normal-eye matings. In general, the behaviour of the Ermine Trace gene is more similar to the Altai gene (Roxi Darlin) and Seymour's DBE gene and less similar to the Cyrridwen gene or American Ojos Azules gene. The Ermine Trace DBE gene produces blue-eyed (most numerous), odd-eyed, normal eyed "latents" and sectoral heterochromia (two colours in one iris, least numerous). More than 50 cats have been bred with this DBE gene and cats from this line have gone to other catteries breeding British and Scottish tipped (chinchilla) cats.

From private correspondence, Ermine Trace cattery mentioned that it was difficult to maintain several independent DBE lines in one cattery, especially when some of the lines have similar phenotypes and there isn't enough space to keep each line in a separate room. To prevent inbreeding of each line it was necessary to keep more than just a few cats and she mentioned that there could be an unplanned mating and that she had already forgotten who is whose descendant. While the Altai seemed to have a specific distribution of white (as seen in Topazes), other phenotypes were hard to differentiate.

More details about this gene and investigation are to be found at Reviewing the Dominant Blue Eye Gene in the Ermine Trace Cattery (Elizabeth Lipovenko)