In 2015, Jenny Ägirsdotter, an exprienced LaPerm breeder in Sweden, started getting some cats that were born with normal full coloring but became totally "bleached" on body as they grew, leaving only the face and legs still normally coloured. One of the most recent kittens started to lose her colour at about 10 weeks of age, while others were later to fade. None of the parent cats have silver, and in any case this is not how silver expresses itself. It is also not karpati as it is expressed and develops differently. It has been confirmed that none of Jenny's cats are related to the karpati strains of LaPerm. Dr Leslie Lyons has requested swabs to test for a new TYR (tyrosinase) variant in these cats.

The photos show how a black kitten with white markings developed into a smoky grey cat with black legs and face by 1 year old. The black/brown tabby kitten faded in a similar way to give a faded colour with normally coloured head and legs. Their pedigrees are known so linechasing should find a common ancestor that had the mutation.

In May 2024, Rod Hitchmough, a Burmese & Mandalay breeder in New Zealand told me of a Burmese breeder whose studs he used for his first couple of litters sired a number of kittens that had white hairs scattered throughout their coats by the time they were 12 weeks old. They were all sold as de-sexed pets as white hairs are a fault in Burmese. One of his friends saw one of those cats many years later and it had changed from being a brown Burmese to being almost white. He didn’t know the breeding of the kittens on their mothers’ side, but they were from a well-used stud which he and others had used without seeing any “bleaching” kittens, so presumably the mothers were related to the father and it was a recessive gene. It sounds similar to the LaPerm bleaching, and there are lots of sepias and minks in LaPerms, so Burmese outcrosses could be the link if it’s the same thing and it had been lurking in the LaPerm gene pool ever since.

GENERALISED PROGRESSIVE PIGMENT LOSS (halfway down page) has also been seen in randombred cats.