Martin my white cat, Andy, fortunately hears quite well. Even though he has golden eyes the vet's first question to me when I took him for his first visit as a kitten was "can he hear?" Apparently the deafness is more of a characteristic in white cats with blue eyes, although it can occur in any. The vet told me that sometimes if a cat has one blue eye and the other a different color, the cat may be deaf in the ear on the same side as the blue eye. Andy's brother turned out to be deaf.