Regardless of their color, shape, and size, it’s impossible not to find a kitten cute. But one kitten looks a little different to the rest, and he took the internet by storm last week when a picture of him was posted onto Twitter. The little guy has the most gorgeous coat full of orange curls and the adorable pic had many people realizing that they’d never seen a curly-haired cat before.
In response to that, many people then began sharing pictures of their own “Selkirk Rex” cats, and it turns out they’re now a lot more common than the internet first thought.
We did a bit of digging, and now we want to share with you what we found about the whole history of curly-haired cats. It’s pretty fascinating!
The adorable snap of the kitten was first shared by meanpIastic on Twitter with the caption, “I’ve never seen a cat with curls until now.” The post immediately went viral with over 18,000 likes and 6,500 retweets, and people took to the comments to agree that they’ve never seen this type of cat before.
One person commented:
“Wow hahaha I’ve never seen this type of cat before. So cute!”
Another person added:
“I want one!”
It turns out that the story behind Selkirk Rex cats is an interesting one. Apparently, the origins of this curly-haired cat can be traced to one particular rescue cat named Miss DePesto.
Apparently, Miss DePesto was born in a Montana shelter in 1987. She was in a litter of five, and her other four siblings had poker straight coats. But Miss DePesto was different, as she had been born with gorgeous, tightly curled fur.
The kitty was adopted by Jeri Newman, who was a local Persian breeder. Jeri found her so beautiful that she decided to breed Miss DePesto with her black Persian. They ended up producing a litter of six babies – and they all had their mom’s luscious curly hair!
Jeri realized the curly hair was a dominant genetic trait – and this was the beginning of the Selkirk Rex breed.
Many people shared pictures of their own adorable Selkirk Rexs, and they were mostly met with positive comments. But some people criticized the original breeder of the cat, whilst others said that the shelter shouldn’t have given a rescue cat away to a breeder.
“So you rescue a cat and then breed it to make more cats… sure, that makes sense,” one person said.
Another commented:
“Can’t condone breeding, sorry! Especially when there are so many stray and shelter cats out there who need loving homes or are euthanized.”
A final comment read:
“I’m baffled as to why a shelter would let a breeder adopt a cat without it being spayed? Then she bred the ‘cute’ cat to make even more kittens to add to the overpopulation problem. This shelter really needs to review its adoption policies.”
Interestingly, Twitter had now removed the majority of posts about Selkirk Rexs, which leads us to question the authenticity of the breed’s backstory. What’s your opinion on the whole thing? Let us know in the comments!
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