A cat with vitiligo has a coat that is a mirror of his skin pigmentation. The appearance is like nothing you have seen before.
As vitiligo is a condition which causes patches of skin to lose pigmentation (a loss of the pigment melanin) this is shown in the fur coat. What you get is a strange, fragmented black and white coat if the cat is a black cat. The effect would be quite different if this cat, whose name is Scrappy, had a different coat type. Also the way the vitiligo develops varies, which must vary the coat appearance.
Here is Scrappy before he developed vitiligo:
Michael Jackson had this condition. The fine hairs of a person’s arm would turn white due to loss of pigment in the same way that Scrappy’s fur has turned white due to being devoid of pigment.
Scrappy’s owner is Dave Platt. He is a builder from Yorkshire, UK.
He said:
“Scrappy was jet black as a kitten. But when he was seven my mum was looking after him and rang me to say a white patch had appeared on his head. We took him to the vet as we thought he might have had a stroke. At that time, the vet couldn’t explain what was causing it. In the next few years, Scrappy began to get more and more white patches, then it slowed down. But in the last three or four years it has started again. More recently, a vet identified that Scrappy could possible have vitiligo. We don’t know, but he may turn completely white.”
Scrappy has an interesting expression too. He is a bit of a celebrity.
I love Scrappy. He is one cool mancat.🐾💜💜
I think it looks cool, and yes his expression too. Must not have freaked him out then.