How will a blue point ragdoll and a white domestic shorthair's kittens look like??

[Willowy]

How would you add melanin to a developing white?

 

[The Goodbye Bird]

How would you add melanin to a developing white?

That's the hard part, but I was thinking it could be produced in a lab and added to the inside of the ears somehow. If the accepted theory about why most BEWs are deaf and some are not is true (the development of the inner ear needing melanin at a certain stage) adding the artificial melanin to the correct place at the correct developmental phase would produce a cat that can hear permanently, and since no more melanin is being produced, the cat would still end up pure white, though you might have patches for a while.

So you'd have to refine the procedure obviously, but the basic idea is that you take the BEW kitten at just before the time its hearing starts to develop and you saturate the inner ears with melanin, causing the cat's hearing to develop normally. Since melanin is produced locally (by that I mean, right at the spot in the cat it ends up) this procedure would have to be extremely precise.

 

[bella.cat]

Hi.
The picture of them as promised

 

[Willowy]

That's the hard part, but I was thinking it could be produced in a lab and added to the inside of the ears somehow.

Well, it's always good to look into all possibilities, but I'm not at all sure that's:

1.) Possible (is there even such a thing as synthetic melanin? Is the relevant part of the ear accessible without surgery?)

2.) Effective (would adding melanin to the ears even do anything? Or does it have to occur naturally?)

3.) Affordable (pretty sure that would cost at least hundreds per kitten, if not thousands. I don't think anybody is going to pay that much)

But definitely keep us posted as to what you find out, that sounds really intriguing.

Hi.
The picture of them as promised View attachment 341067

Awww! They're adorable! I love that age.

 

[The Goodbye Bird]

The picture of them as promised

They got cute!