Although the breed is after the famous Egyptian statue, the breed bears little relevance to the ancient Egyptian civilization. The cats can relate to the Pharaonic cat, a name given to hairless cats in pet paintings styled when the Eastern world was famous in the 18th and 19th dynasties. Sphynx cats share qualities similar to pharaonic cats and have a “dog-like” personality. Like the Pharaonic cats, Sphynx cats are amiable, people-oriented cats that love attention.
Due to the lack of physical features in the Sphynx cat, they can pose in positions that often resemble the pet paintings of the Pharaonic cats. These paintings and similar portrayals of cats were usually also seen in India and Asian countries, which interestingly are hot countries where the hairless gene could have thrived, suggesting a distant migration of hairless cats from these regions. Although there is a slight chance that Sphynx cats are a byproduct of a natural hairless mutation from a Pharaonic cat, it is more likely that the cats are the result of breed experimentation in recent times.
The origins of the Sphynx cat can go back to the first registered “naked” cat, Prune, born in 1966. Prune with a few hairless cats, which set the foundation for this breed. Prune has to go to Canada, where the breed first started. The breed in the United States through crossbreeding with the Devon Rex. This crossbreeding is still evident in Sphynx cats with similar body types and huge ears. Due to Prune’s genetic background, hairlessness did not occur in all of the produced litter, which led to many failed efforts in creating the “perfect” hairless cat, and as a result, the breed had to be from scratch. As many of these hairless cats were not suitable for breeding, the Sphynx cat of today has a small and genetically diverse population.
Ancient Egyptian Connection
When first hearing about the Sphynx cat, many people associate this unique breed with ancient Egypt. Although this cat is a newer breed, it shares a strong bond with the cats depicted in Egyptian history due to its appearance and body structure. Many people have mistaken the breed for being directly related to the cats of Egypt. The breed comes from Canada, but its looks explain why people think this way. The Egyptian cats were known for their elongated bodies and large ears, much like today’s cats.
The history between the Sphynx cat and the Egyptian cats is captivating. Several Sphynx cats have gone into Holland and France. A direct descendant of the first hairless cats in North America was purchased by a foundation cat breeder in Wadena, Minnesota, in the early 1970s. It was a time when two sets of cat breeders on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, on two separate instances and for two separate reasons, known only to themselves, would intertwine to develop the same hairless cat.
These hairless foundation cats would disappear into out-crossing with other cat breeds to ensure their place in cat breeder’s programs. Why the history of the Sphynx cat from one continent to the other is so difficult to trace? However, in Holland in the early 1980s, several hairless kittens were born to a shorthaired domestic cat named Jingo, the starting point for today’s Canadian Sphynx’s human selective breeding programs.
Discovery of the First Sphynx Cat
A little-known event in a small town in Minnesota eventually led the Sphynx cat to the world’s stage. 1966, the first Sphynx, known as “Prune,” was born in Toronto, Canada. However, in 1975, Prune was saved from a dog attack by a neighbor. The owner, fearing for the cat’s safety, placed Prune in the care of a different owner. Unknown to Prune’s original owner, Prune changed hands numerous times and was either lost or given away to new homes.
At some of these homes, Sphynx cats were allowed to breed with other hairless breeds, which eventually led to the genetic development of the modern Sphynx breed. At one time, Prune to the president of the California Association of Bearded Collies, which sparked an interest in hairless cats to find the origins of Prune, and eventually Mr. Milt and Ethelyn Pearson (owners of Prune in Minnesota) received a phone call in Tampa, Florida from the editor of the March 1993 Cats Magazine, inquiring if their cat was the original Prune.
This event would later lead to the birth of a new cat breed, but the discovery of this cat’s origins prompted other pet owners to breed their hairless cats. They desired to exploit the unique mutation. These people placed an ad in the pet section of the Toronto Sun newspaper, offering hairless kittens to good homes. Little did they realize that this minor event would eventually lead the Sphynx to world attention.
Early Breeding Efforts
Early in the Sphynx cat’s history, attempts to breed these cats were unsuccessful due to a lack of resources and knowledge of genetics. Although hairless cats have throughout history, breeders in Europe have been working on the Sphynx cat we know today since the early 1960s. Two sets of hairless cats in North America provided the foundation for the Sphynx breed. The first hairless cats from Toronto, Canada, were sold to Oregon in the mid-1970s. These cats did not resemble the current Sphynx and Siamese cats. One of the original hairless cats was born in Toronto around 1966 when a domestic cat gave birth to a hairless female kitten to several domestic cats, and the hairless gene was eventually lost.
In 1978, another hairless cat was born in Toronto to a domestic shorthaired cat. This cat was also female and was known as Jezabelle. I never passed on Jezabelle to a few domestic cats, but I bred the gene again. These cats are primarily in New Mexico and Minnesota. The second group of cats resulted from two separate occurrences of hairless kittens born in Wadena, Minnesota.
The first kitten, Prune, born in 1975, resulted from a natural genetic mutation. Romeo, born in 1982, was produced from the same breeder’s deliberate attempts to create a hairless breed of cats using a different hairless strain and bred together The cats from Canada and the cats from Minnesota in various ways to develop the Sphynx breed. Early breeders also used cats from Morocco and Australia to strengthen the gene pool.
