Lykoi cats and kittens are all the rage at the moment. They look different. They look like werewolves some people say. It’s because they have a genetic mutation which gives them sparse hair cover. They are half way between a hairless Sphynx and a normal cat and have the face of a Sphynx. They come with a hefty pricetag which doesn’t surprise me because anything that is different, and therefore rare, is more expensive.
These pictures come from a Lykoi cat breeder in Poland whose name is Dorota Strychar. She is the country’s first breeder of Lykoi cats. She started breeding them in late 2017. She currently has four adult cat and six kittens. She takes very good photographs.
The name of the cat “Lykoi” comes from the Greek for wolf apparently. The name is an example of imaginative name creation by cat breeders. The name is important if the breed is to capture the imagination of the public. They are active and need a lot of interaction with their human companions. The breed started in Tennessee, USA in 2011. I have a page on the breed written by Jo Singer if you want to read about it.
I felt that one of the her young Lykoi cats warranted a thought bubble. I apologise to the breeder. It looked to me as if this cat could be a young witch’s familiar. I don’t want to rehash the superstitions of the Middle Ages but if the Lykoi cat had been around at that time they would have been a perfect candidate as a witch’s familiar. It is easy to let the imagination run riot and visualise a Lykoi cat lurking around a witch’s hovel at night.
