Color Mutations

Burn, Byrne, Mr. Byrne, Bernie, Burnie, little guy, has now been here over a month. Gender identity confusions have been resolved, and Burn is in fact a boy! No wonder he's such a trouble maker! He had the all clear with his doc and couldn't have had more fun at his first vet visit. I hope he has as much fun when he returns for a snip snip sometime in the next month or so.

I'm not sure why, but our black kitten with the white abdomen and patch o' white on his chest is going through a color change transformation I can't explain. Nor can his vet! His black hairs are being replaced daily with white, and each day he's becoming whiter and whiter. I have decided to take monthly photos to chart both his grown and his mutations in the hopes someone has had similar experiences and can share the longer term effect. The above photo reflects the end of his first month here (he arrived on August 16).

Now I'm a household with a black dog with some white, a white dog with some black, a white cat with black, a black cat turning white, and then there's Bean, my liver brown and white anomoly. However, despite all these somewhat neutral colors, the colonies of dust bunnies that are gathered up daily all remain a solid gray!

Byrne is learning a lot and for a cat, he's pretty responsive. I'll have to get some videos going but so far he has learned:

Coming when called from inside various rooms AND from outside to inside;
Barreling in through the dog door (he learned that on his own);
Sit;
High five;
Down (well, sort of...this one causes him to roll over for a belly rub)
and an important one for a mouthing kitten, 'play nice.
He taught a high prey drive visiting Lab how to treat kittens and cats nicely, and they're becoming friends!!! Although I think Burn likes making this dog crash into fences when he slips through on a "chase dare".

He is fearless, funny, confident, amusing, trouble making and determining what costume will adorn his growing body come Halloween.