If you’re aware of the Scottish John Byrne, this is the Canadian John Byrne.

I hope we’re not the only two people that understand what I wrote

See Wikipedia for odd-eyed cats: “An odd-eyed cat is a cat with one blue eye and one green, yellow or brown eye. [...] As all cats are blue-eyed as kittens,[6] the differences in an odd-eyed kitten’s eye color might not be noticeable save upon close inspection. Odd-eyed kittens have a different shade of blue in one eye. The color of the odd eye changes over a period of months, for example, from blue to green to yellow, until it reaches its final, adult color.”

Nice pictures too, showing a red-eye and green eye-shine young odd-eyed cat.

So now my hypotheses is that your cat is a sub-adult youngster, not yet reflecting yellow eye-shine.

I’m not a biologist but there are two more or less famous facts on eyes that we can check the web for.

First, the tetrapod (landliving vertebrate) eye is twice backwards, compared to cephalopods.

The blood supply in vertebrate eyes comes from the front, with oxygen and cooling (due to the light!), so they cover the nerve receptors for light (and especially makes a blind spot where the blood vessels enter the eye).

And they force the receptors, placed as the 9th or so cellular layer down, to face away (!) from the eye entrance.

Second, the layer beneath the receptors is usually a light absorbing black (or brown, in humans) layer, to avoid light from destroying light-sensitive biomolecules necessary to feed the receptors and to enhance acuity by suppressing scattered light.

But despite that cats (as dogs and many other animals) have a reflective layer behind the retina, to give the infalling surviving photons a second chance to reach a receptor. Less acuity, more sensitivity.

So especially in humans, but also other animals we have a red-eye effect, when we see the brown retinal pigment. And then we have other colors, when reflected in reflective layers of various kinds.

[At this point I had to check:

"White eyeshine occurs in many fish, especially walleye; blue eyeshine occurs in many mammals such as horses; yellow eyeshine occurs in mammals such as cats, dogs, and raccoons; and red eyeshine occurs in rodents, opossums and birds.

The human eye has no tapetum lucidum, hence no eyeshine. However, in humans and animals two effects can occur that may resemble eyeshine: leukocoria (white shine, indicative of abnormalities including cataracts, cancers, and other problems) and red-eye effect (red shine, apparent only in flash photography). [...] Cats and dogs with blue eyes (see Eye color) may display both eyeshine and red-eye effect. [...] Individuals with heterochromia may display red eyeshine in the blue eye and “normal” yellow / green / blue / white eyeshine in the other eye.”

I assume green eye-shine could bee a yellow-red mixture (“both eyeshine and red-eye effect”) so your cat is likely a blue eye?!]

Probably a simple explanation of it, but I’m not that familiar with the structure of cat eyes.

Why anyone thought there would be any kind of energy barrier at the “edge” of the galaxy is beyond me, but it’s still a fun episode.

I need to get a life, though

Even worse, you can download it here.

There, I’ve just out-geeked all of you.

That’s not really a good thing, is it?

Is that your cat?

Should I be sad?

About two years later, I won a Doctor Who trivia contest because I was the only one who knew the coordinates to Gallifrey. And those are stuck in my head to this day, like some twisted variation on pi memorization.

Boy, now I am sad.

It’d be a good test for fellow Trekkers/Trekkies to see who can get this!

KP