ERMINE TRACE BLUE-EYED SILVER AND GOLDEN BRITISH SHORTHAIRS

Elizaveta Lipovenko has found DBE-ALT in her British Shorthairs, producing blue-eyed and odd-eyed chinchilla/silver shaded and tipped golden cats. In 2026, testing has shown the Ermine Trace cats to have the DBE-ALT gene. This also means DBE-ALT may be deeply embedded in silver and golden series British Shorthairs/Longhairs. Cats that were registered with the code "61" (blue eyes from the KIT white spotting gene) were more likely DBE-ALT 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, the DBE-ALT mutation was 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 -don't though all of these are green-eyed.

It was not certain what the homozygotes of this gene look like. It is suspected they either did not develop, or they stopped developing very early and were 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 produced blue-eyed (most numerous), odd-eyed, normal eyed "latents" and sectoral heterochromia (two colours in one iris, least numerous). By 2023, more than 50 cats had been bred with this DBE gene and cats from this line went 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 wasn'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)

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Because all of the DBE-ALT British Shorthair/Longhair cats trace back to a limited gene pool of silver and golden BSH/BLH, if we trace lines back far enough they all have common ancestors. Line-breeding means some of those ancestors appear multiple times in pedigrees. In selecting for the best chinchilla and golden colours, breeders may have accidentally selected cats that had DBE-ALT. In theory, DBE-ALT could go back as far back as those early lines, remaining hidden behind cats with colourpoint blue eyes, while "latent" cats were masked by the greenish eyes desired in silver cats.

For example, Silver Oberta Fan Liwardia is in the Oliver and Ermine Trace lines and is also related to the Wanessa Emerald Flower through Clarence of Sarsen Stones. That line traces even further back to common ancestors of many silver and golden series British Shorthairs/Longhairs such as Polar Jenko, Prometheus V Aemstelveste and cats with the D'Oaxaca, Jadwiga and Potentilla prefixes. Some of these cats appear multiple times in pedigrees from the 1980s and 1990s. There is no way of testing any of those long-gone ancestors and this makes it impossible to work out when and where the DBE-ALT mutation occurred.

The DBE-ALT gene was identified in the offspring of Seymour (Seimur), a silver tabby shorthair from Russia, progenitor of the Topaz breed. It is possible that the gene mutation occurred in silver/golden series British Shorthairs and that it escaped into the wider cat population.