Ojos Azules
Deep blue eyes in any coat colour, which no other breed manages: blue eyes usually come tied to white or to points. One of the rarest cats anywhere.
Photo by Cristóbal Alvarado Minic, CC BY 2.0
Overview
The Ojos Azules is the only cat breed with deep blue eyes in any coat colour. In every other cat, blue eyes come packaged with white markings or with the pointed pattern, and here they do not: a solid black Ojos Azules can have eyes as blue as a Siamese.
It began with a single tortoiseshell cat found in New Mexico in 1984, and it is one of the rarest breeds in existence.
Temperament
Affectionate, gentle and moderate in nearly every respect. The temperament was never a focus of the breeding programme because the eye colour was, so what exists is essentially an ordinary friendly domestic cat.
They are sociable with people and other animals, moderately active, and not particularly vocal.
Care and grooming
A weekly brush for the short coat and nothing else demanding.
The health problem is the reason there are almost none of these cats. The gene responsible for the blue eyes was found to cause fatal cranial and skeletal defects when a kitten inherits two copies, so the breed can only ever be bred blue eyed to non blue eyed, and even that has not been enough to make the programme comfortable.
Living and exercise
An ordinary indoor household would suit one perfectly well, if one could be found.
The honest position on this breed is that it is barely a breed. Registration has largely stalled, very few breeders work with it, and the genetic problem behind it is the reason. Ten to twelve years is the figure usually quoted.
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