The Beautiful Hairless Sphynx Cat

I believe I've officially become the crazy cat lady. It wasn't intentional, I assure you, but I now have 11 cats. Two are your ordinary house cats, rescued from shelters years and years ago. Nothing special there. However, I became enamored with the Sphynx breed of cat several years ago. These are the hairless, big eared, angular cats that you see occasionally on television. And they are one of the most amazing breeds. While they aren't really completely hairless, they are nearly hairless. Some have a bit more fuzz than others, but mostly Sphynx have a downy coat that makes them feel like velvet or a chamois cloth. And they're warm, running a few degrees warmer than hairy cats.

So, how did I end up with 11 of felines? It happened quickly. I got my lovely female, Sophia, as a breeding queen (the name given to females) because I love Sphynxes so much that I wanted to be around them as much as possible, while not keeping them, of course. I also love the idea of perfecting the breed to get the most loveable, hairless cats to share with the world. Okay, maybe not the world, but you know what I mean.

When it was time, I had Sophia bred to a handsome stud and 68 days later, she gave birth to 7 kittens. An x-ray only showed 5, so the last two were quite the surprise. The kittens are known as 'thermal' kittens. That means they all come out solid pink, which is known as cream in the Sphynx world, and wouldn't get any coloring for a few weeks. This made distinguishing them impossible. So much for weighing them separately and tracking their weights.

But when they got their coloring, cream with muted shades of lilac, which is a grayish blue color, I could tell them apart. This made my cat total up to 10. The 11th cat is actually an F1, or a first generation offspring of a crossbred mating. Yes, I know that sounds complicated, but it isn't. In Sphynx genetics, when a purebred Sphynx is bred with an 'outcross', certain allowable breeds of cat like domestic shorthair or American shorthair, the offspring are known as F1s. When an F1 is bred, its offspring are F2s and so on. Crossbreeding is done to increase the gene pool or blood line. It's done with most animals, at least until the breed is well established.

The F1 is my daughter's cat, but she's in college and can't have pets in her dorm. That means I have the F1, my two shelter rescued cats, Sophia the queen and the 7 babies. I will, however, only have the babies until they are about 3 months old, when they will go to their new homes. Sphynx are fairly expensive because they are considered a rare breed. Not many breeders makes them rare, which keeps the selling price high. And with the economy in such a slump, I might just live up to the crazy cat lady name. I do have a website, Purr-NRG-Sphynx.com, so hopefully I can find loving homes for my babies and whittle down my Sphynx population. But I'll certainly enjoy my adorable little guys while I have them!