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Not to
take anything away from the total eclipse, but Cornwall is
already doing quite nicely in the mystic, quaint and strange
departments. Tintagel castle (the alleged site of Camelot),
the largest collection of pre-Roman field monuments in western
Europe, those fun-loving pirates of Penzance — that's
a fair amount of the fantastic for a 1,376-square-mile county,
a peninsula really, not much larger than Rhode Island. And
let us not forget the Cornish rex cat.
The first
rex cat born in captivity, a cream male subsequently named
Kallibunker, arrived with a retinue of four straight-hair
littermates on July 21, 1950, in Bodmin Moor, a rocky, windswept
highland in Cornwall. Kallibunker and his friends belonged
to Nina Ennismore, who owned their dam, Serena, a tortie-and-white
straight-hair cat. (Kallibunker's sire, it has been said,
was "perhaps" a full brother to Serena, but "perhaps"
doesn't prove paternity.)
Nina Ennismore
had formerly bred and shown rex rabbits. As a consequence
of this hare-raising experience, she knew that Kallibunker's
spiral coat was the work of a mutated gene, a gene similar
in effect to the ones that had also raised their curly heads
among rats, mice and horses.
On the
advice of cat fancier Brian Stirling-Webb and geneticist A.C.
Jude, Ennismore bred Kallibunker to his mother. A litter of
three from this union — a female and two males —
was born in August 1952. The female was normal-coated, the
males were both rex. One of those died at seven months; the
other, named Poldhu, joined Kallibunker as one of the early
fathers of the rex breed, which was called the Cornish rex
after its place of origin.
After
Nina Ennismore had inbred her rex cats as far as prudently
possible, she began to outcross to ordinary shorthair cats
so as not to risk the rex cats' health or reproductive ability.
She could have introduced the rex coat to any breed, but she
and other rex fanciers chose to confine the gene to shorthairs
for two reasons: Prevailing taste dictated that longhair rex
were the aesthetic equivalent of investment bankers with dread
locks. Moreover, the longhair rex coat was considered too
vulnerable to matting.
As Ennismore's
cat population grew — she had more than 40 cats at one
point, a figure well above red line — she discovered
that she wasn't able to sell enough kittens to defray expenses.
She elected, therefore, to put a number of her cats to sleep
in 1956. Kallibunker and Serena were among that unfortunate
lot. Their son, Poldhu, suffered an untimely, though less
decisive, fate when two veterinarians performed a testicular
biopsy on him to determine whether he was a plain blue-tabby-and-white
male or a rare, siring blue-cream-and-white. The vets had
assured Ennismore that this procedure "would in no way
affect" Poldhu's ability to reproduce, but the biopsy
was the unkindest cut of all for he never sired again. And
as though to add ineptitude to irony, the tissue sample taken
from the unsuspecting cat was lost in the laboratory along
with his virility.
Nina Ennismore
had stopped working with rex cats entirely by the late 1950s,
but Brian Stirling-Webb was determined to see the rex established
as a breed. As of 1960, however, only one rex male remained
in Britain. The following year Stirling-Webb learned of the
existence of another rex male, a 1-year-old named Kirlee,
who lived in Devon, the county immediately east of Cornwall.
The dam of this kitten was a tortie-and-white stray who had
taken up with Beryl Cox. The sire was a feral, rex-coated
male who lived in an abandoned tin mine near Cox's home.
Cox was
a cat fancier, but not in the uppercase sense of the term.
She delighted in Kirlee's unique appearance, his intelligence
and warmth, his ability to walk a tightrope, and the charming
way that he wagged his tail like a dog whenever he was praised
for this achievement. Yet she had no inclination to create
an entire curly-coated breed.
Nonetheless,
when Cox heard about Stirling-Webb's interest in rex cats,
she offered to send Kirlee to live with him in the hope that
Kirlee would provide some new blood for the new breed. When
Kirlee was introduced to a few rex ladies from Cornwall, however,
each kitten that sprang from those matings had unsprung, straight
hair.
"Eureka,"
said Stirling-Webb, or words to that effect. There are two
separate mutation genes and two separate rex breeds at work
here. As Stirling-Webb knew, the rex gene is recessive —
i.e., the rex coat appears only when a kitten inherits two
copies of the gene for that trait, one from each parent. Therefore,
if the gene responsible for Kirlee's mutation was the same
one responsible for Kallibunker's curly coat, all the kittens
born from breedings between their curly-coated descendants
would have to have wavy coats. When the twains never met,
Stirling-Webb knew that instead of Kirlee contributing to
the development of Cornish rex, he would wind up contributing
to the development of an entire new breed of his own.
(Meanwhile,
in East Germany in 1958, a wavy-haired, black female cat —
which had been adopted by a cat-loving doctor named Rose Sheuer-Karpin
seven years earlier — produced two curly-coated offspring
after having delivered nothing but straight-hair kittens in
several previous liters. This cat, whose name was Lammchen,
had been living on the grounds and in the basement of the
Hufeland Hospital for five years before Sheuer-Karpin adopted
her. Subsequent test matings between members of this German
rex strain and Cornish rex cats proved that those two families
were compatible.)
Before
giving up her cats altogether, Nina Ennismore had sent several
rex to breeders in the United States. A female named Lamora
Cove, who was bred to her father, Poldhu, before his unfortunate
biopsy, was sent to a breeder in California in 1957. Two of
Cove's offspring — Diamond Lil of FanTCee and Marmaduke
of DazZling — are cats from whom all Cornish rex in America
descend. For a time breeding stock was scarce in the United
States, but dedication, ingenuity and Siamese outcrosses were
not. The latter contributed the fine bone, distinctive head
type, large ears and the sporty, greyhound look that is characteristic
of today's Cornish rex.
The Cornish
rex was a straightaway success in North America. In 1963 the
breed was accepted for championship competition by the Canadian
Cat Association and the American Cat Fanciers Association.
Eventually all the other cat registries in North America recognized
the Cornish rex as a separate breed. For a time, however,
the Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA) did not acknowledge the
difference between Cornish and Devon rex, despite genetic
evidence to the contrary. CFA registered all rex as Cornish
until 1979, when it finally agreed to create a separate breed
designation for the Devon rex.
The
Building Code
The Cornish
rex is a small- to medium-size cat with an extremely soft,
wavy coat, fine bones and a race-car chassis. Its torso is
long and slender, though never tubular; its hips are muscular
and somewhat heavy for its body (hence the breed's slight
tendency to hind-leg lameness); its back is naturally arched;
and it sports a commanding tuck up: The lower line of the
abdomen curves upward toward the spine, which ends in a long,
slender, tapering, extremely flexible tail.
A pleasing
confederation of curves, the Cornish rex has a long, graceful
neck that leads to a comparatively small, narrow, somewhat
egg-shaped head. A rounded forehead, a distinctive Roman nose
with a high, prominent bridge, a pronounced muzzle break,
medium to large, oval-shaped eyes (a full eye's width apart),
and large ears (erect, alert, and set high on the head) give
the Cornish rex a signature appearance.
The rex
coat — short, remarkably soft and silky — is characterized
by a relatively dense, tight, uniform marcel wave, lying close
to the body and extending from the top of the head across
the back, sides, hips and tail. The size and depth of wave
may vary, while the hair on the underside of the chin, on
the chest, and on the abdomen is short and noticeably wavy.
Personality Profile
Anyone
who appreciates a jolly personality in a cat will love the
active, amazing and agile Cornish rex. Just as this breed's
conformation reveals the Siamese influence, the Cornish rex
personality has been shaped by its Oriental ancestors as well
— with certain modifications.
"They
don't look for heights as much as Siamese do," said one
Cornish rex breeder. "They're more quiet than Siamese,
and they have longer attention spans. They're great at opening
doors and cabinets, and they have very good feet. Because
there's no fur on the bottom of their feet, they're able to
pick marbles up with them."
Cornish
rex are also known, she said, for their self-confidence, their
desire to interact with people, their penchant for giving
kisses, and their faster-than-a-speeding-bullet activity level.
"The Cornish rex is not a cat for those who are looking
for an ornament to match their furniture."
Nor is
the Cornish rex a cat for persons seeking a hypoallergenic
pet. Some people who are allergic to cats can tolerate a rex
because its short coat doesn't hold dust, dander and saliva
as well as a normal coat does, but others have a reaction
to the rex coat. Anyone with allergy problems interested in
any breed of cat should spend some time visiting with and
handling that breed before deciding whether to not to take
one home.
Different Twists of Fate
The Cornish
rex is distinguished from the Devon rex in a number of ways,
including the following. The Devon has a shorter, less plush
and less wavy coat than the Cornish does, even though the
Cornish lacks guard hairs — the course, outer layer of
a cat's coat. What's more, the Devon rex has a decided stop
to its nose (a depression in the face at the junction of the
forehead and muzzle), while the Cornish has a Roman nose.
Finally, the Cornish sports a dramatic tuck up to its underbelly;
the Devon rex does not.
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