Selkirk Rex
The Cat That Moved Mountains
Photograph by Isabelle Francais

When Jeri Newman of Livingston, Montana, introduced the Selkirk rex to the world in the late 1980s, she explained that breed was the namesake of a mountain range in Wyoming, close to the town where the matriarch of these curly-haired cats had been born. The Selkirk's renown as the first cat breed named after a mountain range was short lived, however, because some stickler for detail pointed out that the Selkirk range extends from northern Idaho into southeastern British Columbia. Apprised of this fact, Newman explained that she had really named the breed after her stepfather, whose family name is Selkirk.

The geography of the Selkirk is not the only puzzling fact about the first cat breed to be named after someone's stepfather. Frequently we read that Miss DePesto, the aforesaid matriarch of the breed, was a blue-cream-and white with curly whiskers, Brillo pads in her ears, and a turbulent coat that looked as if it had been treated to a full body wave; but a photo of this cat on the World Wide Web, http://www.purwaky.com/early_history_of_the selkirk_rex.htm indicates that she was a tortoiseshell and white.

Whatever her color Miss DePesto is alleged to have made her way to the Bozeman (Montana) Humane Society along with her mother and five littermates, all of whom were garden-variety domestic shorthairs. Because of Miss DePesto's unusual appearance, an employee at the shelter brought her to Newman's attention.

Like other aspects of Selkirk's history, this account has been contravened too. In 1998, Donna Bass, a member of the Selkirk rex breed club, received a letter from a woman who claimed to be the "owner" of Miss DePesto's mother. The woman in question, one Kitty Garrett Brown, wrote: "'I have just learned, to my astonishment, that 'Curly-Q', a kitten born at my place in July of 1987, was the originator of the Selkirk rex breed. I've talked to Jeri Newman and she confirms this. I'm writing because I'm eager for more information about the Selkirk rex. Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to?"

How Newman was able to confirm that Curly-Q/DePesto was born at Brown's buggers the imagination. Brown, for her part, later revealed that "her place" was a shelter called "For Pet's Sake," which she operated from her home. Brown also reported that she had placed Miss DePesto when the kitten was quite young, but she was "bounced back" because she cried too much. (What a surprising trait in a kitten.) Miss DePesto was placed again, this time at the still-rather-young age of 9 weeks, and her second owner eventually passed her on to Newman, who was breeding Persian cats at the time. According to Brown, Miss DePesto's mother was a dilute calico who was missing a foot as the result of being caught in a trap before she was rescued. Her hair wasn't "completely normal." It had a "bit of a kink at the end."

Born on the Fourth of July

Like other cat breeders who came to be in the possession of a cat that displayed a genetic mutation, Newman decided to breed Miss DePesto to find out how that mutation behaved. Thus it happened that on July 4, 1988, "Pest" gave birth to six kittens, whose father was a black Persian male. Three of those kittens had curly hair like their mother's. One of the curlicues was a black-and-white shorthair male; one was a black shorthair female; the third was a tortoiseshell shorthair female.

The presence of these kittens suggested that the gene in charge of Miss DePesto's coat was a dominant one. As you no doubt recall from high school biology classes, if a dominant gene is present in the heterozygous state (that is, if a kitten has one gene for the dominant trait and a corresponding gene for its opposite trait), the dominant trait will prevail.

When Miss DePesto was bred to her black-and-white son the following year, she produced one curly-coated male, a flame point shorthair; two curly-coated females, both tortoiseshells with short hair; and a black, shorthair female with straight hair. The appearance of the flame point fellow indicated that Miss DePesto was carrying a recessive gene for pointed coat. (A pointed coat, most frequently seen on Siamese or Himalayan cats, is one in which a cat's points - face, ears, tail and lower legs - are a different color from is base coat.)

Read All About It

"Don't Miss It! - Unusual Selkirk Rex Cat Coming to Seattle Show" The preceding headline, which appeared in The Seattle Times in February 1992, fewer than four years after Miss DePesto's first litter had been born, bears witness to the speed with which the new breed progressed. According to the Times, the global population of Selkirk rex stood at 90, and two registries - The International Cat Association (TICA) and American Cat Fanciers Association (ACFA) - had accepted the breed for competition in new breed and color classes, one of several preliminary steps on the way to full championship status.

By the time The Seattle Times article appeared, Newman had decided to make certain alterations in the appearance of her new breed. Miss DePesto's head, somewhat small and angular, was not a perfect fit for her Lane Bryant body; and it, in turn, looked uncomfortable on her spindly legs. Newman therefore decided that the British and exotic shorthairs and Persians were the most suitable outcrosses for the Selkirk.

Until January 1, 1998, American shorthairs were allowable outcrosses for the breed. Kittens born on or after January 1, 2010, may have only Selkirk rex or British shorthair parents, and kittens born on or after January 1, 2015, may have only Selkirk rex parents.

A Lexis of Rexes

The Selkirk rex, the third rex cat to appear on the North American show bench, is markedly different from the two rex breeds that preceded it - the Cornish rex and the Devon rex. Both the Cornish and the Devon are fine boned and svelte-bodied. The Selkirk, however, is a medium to large cat with heavy bone that gives it surprising weight.

What's more, there are significant coat differences among the cats. The Devon rex has a shorter, less plush and less wavy coat than the Cornish does, even though the Cornish rex lacks guard hairs - the course, outer layer of a cat's coat. The Selkirk possesses all the types of hair normally found on cats - guard, awn and down - and it comes in shorthair and longhair varieties, unlike the other rexes, which are shorthair-only breeds.

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. The Selkirk's underlying facial structure is rounded and much flatter in appearance.
 
The Bottom Lines

At present the Selkirk Rex enjoys championship status in TICA, ACFA, the American Cat Association and the United Feline Organization. The breed has reached provisional status in the Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA), which registered 121 Selkirks in 1999. That total, which represented an increase of 20 percent from the previous year, ranked the Selkirk 29th among the 37 breeds registered by CFA.

Although the Selkirk rex's defining characteristic is its coat, the breed standard of the Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA) gives equal weight - 30 points each - to head, body, and coat. The single most important feature of the breed, judging by the points allocated in the CFA standard, is the cat's torso, which accounts for 15 out of a possible 100 points. This 15-point torso is described as medium to large, muscular, well-balanced and more rectangular than square.

The International Cat Association (TICA) gives greater weight to the Selkirk's head (32 points) than to any other feature of the cat. Body and coat are tied for second in TICA's estimation with 25 points awarded to each.

The Selkirk has a round, broad, full-cheeked head with medium ears set well apart. Its eyes are large and rounded and also set well apart. They should not appear almond- or oval-shaped.

Unlike other rex breeds, the Selkirk comes in longhaired and shorthaired varieties. The differences in coat length are most apparent on the tail and ruff. The shorthair's coat texture is soft, plushy, full and obviously curly. The coat stands out from the body and should not appear flat or close-lying. The curls are arranged in "clumps" rather than all over waves.

The longhaired Selkirk's coat, while not as plush as the shorthair's, should not appear thin. Once again the curls are distributed randomly in clumps or ringlets.

The Selkirk is found in virtually every color imaginable, including solid, shaded, smoke, tabby, bicolor, pointed, and mink.

Like any young, still-developing breed, the Selkirk rex exhibits the personality traits of it various components: a certain friskiness inherited from its free-roaming ancestors, tempered by the reserve that is the hallmark of its Persian and British shorthair relatives.