According to Sarah Hartwell, in her article: WHITE CATS, EYE COLOURS AND DEAFNESS:
"Dominant white masks all other colours and cats may have blue, orange or odd eyes. Those with blue eyes have a high chance of deafness. Those with one blue eye have a high chance of deafness on the blue-eyed side. Those with orange eyes are far less likely to be deaf.
There is an established link between the white coat color, blue eyes and deafness. The tapetum lucidum is generated from the same stem cells as melanocytes (pigment cells). The blue eyes in a piebald or epistatic white cat indicates a lack of tapetum. Deafness is caused by an absence of a cell layer in the inner ear that originates from the same stem cells as well. In odd-eyed white cats, the ear on the blue-eyed side may be deaf.
# 5% of the general cat population is white cats (i.e. pure white). 15-40% of these pure white cats have one or two blue-eyes.
# Of those white cats with one or two blue eyes, 60-80% are deaf; 20-40% have normal hearing; 30-40% had one blue eye and were deaf while 60-70% had one blue eye and normal hearing.
# Deaf white cats with one or two blue eyes account for 0.25 - 1.5 of total cat population
# Total number of cats with white coat and blue eyes account for 0.75 - 2.0% of total cat population"
Sixty percents of white cats with blue eyes are deaf and I have a fable story of one of them.
Read Deaf Cat Story
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