What is the Selkirk Rex?

A cat with curly hair. The Selkirk Rex is a quite young breed, and is still really rare. It is frequently mentioned as a teddy bear cat with plush coat or a cat in sheep’s clothing. If you ever meet one of them, you’ll understand these names. Its soft, fleecy, curly coat and stubby, ‘beary’ size makes it looks like a little Teddy Bear.

Curly Brandon Lee from Sang Raal

The Selkirk Rex has a strong affection towards their owners. They adore human’s companion, and like to show this with loud purring when someone fondles them. They get along well with dogs or other animals. They are extremely playful.

Curly Karma of Pearl Falcons

As Selkirk Rex is still a young breed, it is allowed to mate them with other breeds (British Shorthair or Persian). Therefore, kittens with straight coat frequently occurs in litters like this. These cats called Selkirk Straight, and they exactly look like a normal British Shorthair or Persian cat.

Bonsai from Sang Raal

Outcross:

As mentioned before, Selkirk Rex is a young breed. Breeders can mate them with other breeds to form their genome - of course by avoiding health problems. Therefore, breeders must pay extra attention to their PKD and HCM screenings.

Breeding them with Persians is allowed between 2010 and 2014. Breeding with British Short- or Longhair is allowed until 2015. Afterwards, only Selkirk Rex cats will be permitted to mate.

Curly Emerica of Pearl Falcons

Care:

The Selkirk Rex comes in either short or long hair. Both hair types need limited attention. Generally, you only need to take care of their combing in the normal shedding periods.

Short haired cats need combing with a brush once in a while. Although, in the case of long haired ones, it is advisable to comb or just simply fondle throughout their coat daily to keep its curls free from matting.

You can bathe them a few days before exhibition, but it is not always necessary. Directly after bath you should avoid combing and drying their coat - just leave it to dry on its own. Like this, its curls will be a lot more spectacular.

You can splash and twist its curls to make the cat’s coat beautifully ringleted before reviewing in an exhibition.

You should cut its claws from time to time or before exhibition like in the case of other breeds.

Curly Escada of Pearl Falcons - Selkirk Rex shorthair

Shorthair coat

Curly Ed Hardy of Pearl Falcons - Selkirk Rex longhair

Longhair coat

The genetics behind curliness:

It is surely weird to hear ‘heterozygous’ or ‘homozygous’ in a cat’s breed description. You are informed what is the cat’s fenotype with these strange expressions, which has a great importance in breeding.

Homozygous and heterozygous cats are different, as you will see in the pictures below.

Purrfect Charlotte of Pearl Falcons - Selkirk Rex homozygot

Curly Kombo of Pearl Falcons - Selkirk Rex heterozigot

 

Unlike in the case of Devon or Cornish Rex, the Selkirk’s curly gene is dominant, which means that only one parent needs to possess the gene for the curly coat to be expressed in the offspring.

Expressions:

Heterozygous: only one parent has the gene for the curly coat

Homozygous: both parents possess the gene for the curly coat

Selkirk Straight: the cat does not carry the Rex gene for the curly coat at all

Therefore, as mentioned above, there are 3 different types of Selkirk Rex:

Bonsai from Sang Raal

Curly Ecko of Pearl Falcons

Purrfect Charlotte of Pearl Falcons

You can find further pictures of Selkirk Rex cats below:

Curly Bruce Willis from Sang Raal

Curly Bruce Willis from Sang Raal

Curly Emerica of Pearl Falcons

Curly Ebony of Pearl Falcons

Curly Epson of Pearl Falcons

Curly Kippi of Pearl Falcons

Curly Kabala of Pearl Falcons

Selkirk Rex babák