Sphynx Cat ANNALI – photo copyright Helmi Flick
The Sphynx is not a fine boned or delicate cat. That said, Annali is quite elegant, I think! Sometimes Sphynx cats can have a bit of a belly or at least it looks like that. The belly should should full as if the cat had just eaten a large meal!1 Perhaps the problem is this. A cat is normally wearing clothes – fur! This hides the shape of the body to a certain extent. It rounds out the shape. Without fur we see all the contours of a cat’s body. The truth is that all “normal” (not highly deveoped through selective breeding) cats have a shape like the Sphynx cat but we just can’t see it. A Sphynx cat is also meant to have wrinkled skin – “the head and torso should have good wrinkling”1. I don’t know if all cats have wrinkled skin, however.
The chest can be barrel shaped. Another interesting feature of the Sphynx is that they are said to have long toes. Perhaps other cats have long toes too but we just can’t see them so clearly. That said I have seen a Sphynx boy cat behave like a monkey in a cage at a cat show, climbing around the roof of the cage etc. and grasping the cage with its long toes as if they were hands. This is a smart and therefore slightly more demanding cat. They are “highly active, vocal and intelligent“1. That means inquisitiveness too. So watch out for potentially dangerous places and objects.
Notes:
1. Legacy of the Cat by Gloria Stephens and Tetsu.
