The owners who have a kitten for the first time are often surprised at the changes in the pet's appearance. It seems that recently the eyes were bright blue, and now they are changing to truly feline green or amber. In fact, this phenomenon is quite understandable and understandable.
The fact is that the color of a cat's eye, as, indeed, of a human eye, depends on the amount of coloring pigment in the front and back of the eyeball. And, like most human babies, newborn kittens have gray or blue-gray eyes. If a child's eyes change color only by 6-8 months, then the kitten's eyes will turn green or yellow in a few weeks. All this happens because there is very little melanin in newborns, and later it begins to accumulate in the iris.
But in cats, things with eye color are somewhat different than in humans. In some breeds, eye color is linked to coat color. For example, Siamese cats tend to have blue eyes, while British ones tend to have amber eyes. The problem is that, unlike the coat color, the color of the eyes of kittens during breeding is very difficult to control, and the "correct" eye shades are very much appreciated by breed lovers.
What happens inside the eye when the color starts to change? When a kitten is still in the embryonic stage, it has about 30 pigment centers. Until the end of the development of the embryo, pigment cells migrate throughout the body, spreading along the wool and iris of the eye. However, by the time the kitten is born, the pigment in the coat has already completely settled, but in the eyes it continues to accumulate. The saturation of blue eye color in a kitten depends on the amount of pigment granules in the retina of the eye. All colors, except for blue, are dominant, which means that with age, kittens' eyes can only change from blue to some other, but never to blue, if the eyes are not blue in principle.
As well as among humans, among cats there are albinos - cats with red eyes (sometimes with only one red eye). In albinos, the retinal pigment is completely absent, so the blood vessels are clearly visible under the retina. These cats will never change their eye color either.
Some scientists believe that the tint of the eyes has something to do with the diet of cats, but there is no direct evidence for this.
Be that as it may, the eyes of cats are a completely mesmerizing sight, no matter what shade they have.
