Hairless Cat Facts For Kids

There are at least eight hairless cat breeds that I know of but there are actually more than that. You will hardly see or know about some of them because they are rare. I am listing eight of them here with a picture that shows six of the eight so you know what they look like. The background picture is of a Peterbald. The person holding the cat is Virginia Mannino and she took the photo. She breeds Peterbald cats.

All hairless cats are cats with a problem, to be honest. The problem is that they should have hair. Something went wrong when the first hairless cats were born. What happened was that some people like cats without hair and they wanted to make some more hairless cats. These people are cat breeders. The first hairless cats just happened as a mistake of nature.

Here is a short description of the hairless cat breeds in the picture. I will list them by the number in the picture. I have added two extra ones to the list, numbers 7 and 8.

1. Sphynx. This is the world’s best known hairless cat breed. It comes from North America. No cat breed is totally hairless though. The Sphynx does have some hair. It is very fine. Their skin feels like a warm chamois leather. You say that like this: “Shameee leather”. It is the leather with which you wipe and clean your car. You can read about the Sphynx on this page (it is written for kids too). The Sphynx cat breed started in 1966.
2. Don Sphynx. This is the Russian version of the North American Sphynx. The breed started in 1987. The Don Sphynx looks the same as the Sphynx. The reason why this cat does not have hair is slightly different to the reason why the Sphynx has no hair. This cat is named after the place where it was first discovered: Rostov-on-Don in Russia.
3. Elf Cat. This is a very rare cat that was created in 2008. It is a mixture of the Sphynx and the American Curl. This is why the ears bend backwards. This feature comes from the American Curl. The Elf Cat is called a “hybrid” which means a mixture of more than one other cat breed.
4. Dwelf Cat. This is also a very rare cat breed and a hybrid cat. There are probably no more than a few of them in all the world. The cat is a mixture of a short legged cat (a dwarf cat) called the Munchkin and two other cats: the Sphynx and the Highlander (or the American Curl). It was created in 2008 by Karen Nelson and Kristen Leedom, in the America.
5. Bambino. This name means “baby” in Italian. This cat has the skin of a baby. All hairless have the same skin. This is a cat with short legs. This is a dwarf cat. It is a well known cat. The Bambino has two things wrong with it. It has short legs and no fur. It is an interesting cat. It was created in 2005 in America.
6. Peterbald. This is a Russian cat that comes from St. Petersburgh in Russia. The name is a mixture of Peter (from “St. Petersburgh”) and “bald” meaning hairless. It is a mixture of the Don Sphynx and the Oriental Shorthair. It was created in 1994. Sometimes Peterbald cats have a coat that is like a brush. Not all of them are hairless.
7. Minskin. Like the Bambino it has short legs and is a dwarf cat. It started in 1998. It is a mixture of a lot of cat breeds, the Munchkin, Sphynx, Devon Rex and Burmese.
8. Ukrainian Kevkoy. A hairless cat from the Ukraine that is like a Don Sphynx with floppy, folded ears. The Levkoy has been around since about 2004.

In fact, there are no cats that have no hair at all. Even the Sphynx has some hair. You can see that most of these cat breeds have a been around for quite a short time compared to most other breeds.