“Her changing still goes on every day, and I love her more and more,” she said.
The whole thing is really downright fascinating.
Check out Elli’s amazing before and after pic below to see how much she has transformed over the years.
A couple of years ago, Nicole Böhm rescued two cats — one white and one black. The cats were siblings and had been living on a dirty farm in Germany until Nicole came along. Once Nicole saw their poor living conditions, she decided she had to do something and took them both home with her.
At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They were just your two typical happy and healthy cats.
She never expected that the black cat, Elli, would eventually start to change colors, but that’s exactly what happened.
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“She had a tuxedo coat like her sister. Nothing unusual,” Böhm told The Dodo.
“The changing began about one year after birth.”
It started slow. Nicole noticed a few white hairs on Elli’s normally all black coat — first one, then two, then three.
As the days went by, more and more white hairs started popping up, until eventually, it turned into a full-on white patch of fur.
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“It was just a little white spot on her back. I didn’t know why, so I took her to the vet,” Böhm said.
The vet diagnosed the cat as having vitiligo, a rare disease that causes loss of skin color in blotches.
For a cat, the changing pigmentation also means the hair loses its color a well. Although vitiligo is often linked to other dangerous health conditions, in Elli’s case, the loss of pigmentation was totally harmless. She was still just as healthy as ever… she just looked a little bit different in the mirror.
As the color changes accelerated, Elli’s whole appearance transformed.
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“I was surprised,” Böhm said. “I’m still surprised.”
Soon after, Nicole started an Instagram page for the cat to document the transformation, and the photos are something you just have to see.
We’ve never seen a cat so uniquely beautiful.
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Elli’s appearance just kept changing and changing and within a few short years, she was literally unrecognizable.
The crimson black cat became almost entirely white, with only a few grayish remains scattered throughout her fur to hint at what she once looked like.
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She is just so unique looking… in an awesome way, of course!
The loss of pigmentation from the vitiligo transformed the once commonly colored cat into something completely extraordinary.
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Despite the fact that she looks a little bit different, however, underneath her nice new white coat is still the same old lovable cat.
“Her personality is the same as ever. It doesn’t matter to her,” Böhm said. “She is as cute and lovely and as playful as the first day.”
The other cat Nicole adopted, Elli’s sister, doesn’t seem to even notice a difference either. The two cats still treat each other the same as always. Elli’s sister does not have vitiligo and has not changed colors at all.
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Even though Elli still continues to whiten, Nicole doesn’t think she will ever become completely white. She predicts that some of the black marks on her face, as well as other areas, will likely remain.
While the cat certainly looks a lot different than she once did, Nicole still finds her just as adorable as ever.
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By Morgan Slimak
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Morgan Slimak is a contributing writer at Shareably. He is based in Pennsylvania and can be reached at [email protected].