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YES, I know the pictures are broken, and I apologize... I will fix it later but, in the interests of getting the new site launched, I decided to leave the text here and come back to fix the photos soon. Thanks for your patience History of the Peterbald Cat Any new breed of cat comes from one of two
things: a cross of two existing breeds, or a spontaneous genetic mutation. Any
cat with a unique and prominent distinction will have begun from a genetic
mutation. Some examples of this would be the American Curl, the Munskin, the
Scottish fold, the distinctly curly coat of the Rex breeds, the Canadian Sphynx,
and the Don Sphynx. And so begins the history of the Peterbald, not with a
Peterbald, but with a woman and her cats that became known as the Don Sphynx.
The Peterbald's existence is due to the kind
nature of one Russian woman, Elena Kovaleva. In February 1986 Elena was going
home to her daughter and their four other rescued cats. On a playground near her
home, she noticed some boys throwing each other a bag. In the bag a kitten was
crying. Elena took the bag from them, and, in it she found a tiny kitten. She
estimated the kitten to be 3-4 months of age. She was a pretty, fluffy
tortoiseshell girl. What would you have done? Elena took the kitten to her
house.
She was a funny, furry little kitten. Her tail
was covered with hairs radiating in a flat, fan-shaped manner - similar to a
squirrel. Her little head was slightly bald, like her mother's at the same age.
She was born February 20th, 1990. She had a gray coat, so Elena
called her Serka (in Russian "sery" means "gray"). Once they let her go in the
house, she walked and sniffed around. While Irina watched her, she decided
that, no, this is not a cat - she doesn"t look like a cat. Next the kitten took
an interest in something, using her paws like hands and holding it to bite it.
Irina decided that this is not a cat; this is a monkey. And as she is a monkey,
she should be called Chita, the name of a monkey in a movie Irina recalled.
Yet another year past, and the cat show had come
again. Elena and Irina took Varvara, Chita, and Chita's sister, Patchy this
time. As there were now three cats with the same thin(ning) hair, it was hard
to say that Varvara was just one sickly cat; this is how they were being born!
At this show, they won a large glass salad bowl; their first prize!
Although they were received much better at this
third cat show, there was still no real interest in the cats. Irina bred Chita
once she was old enough. They had to work hard because Chita did not receive
the Toms well. She tore two neighbor tomcats up before they finially found a
stray tom with the experience to breed her quickly. She had four kittens, all
large males with a strange, brushy coat. She kept one for a bit longer than the
others, and was surprised that he lost his hair at two months old, becoming what
we now call velour.
The sire of the next three litters was a smoky
blue tabby named Dima. He had no white (remember, Vasily; Chita's father - had
a locket, and he became the source of white marking, "piebald" gene, locket).
This breeding process really confirmed their suspicion that this "hair losing"
tendency would happen in every litter. Chita's third litter brought a female
that was different than the rest: she was born completely hairless! Irina sent
her to Leningrad to Irina Katzer, where she would live with her brother of a
previous litter, Anton Mif.
It was here that Irina made a decision: she had
read of a breed of horse, the Przewalski, where they had needed to line breed to
save a nearly extinct line. She understood from the book that line breeding
would lock in specific characteristics and features, so she chose to cross Chita
with her son. The kittens came in February 1993, and once again, there was one
born naked kitten, a male this time. She named him Viscount Mif. Another male
of the same litter, Vityaz Mif, was the first to go to Moscow.
As you have read, at first, these women thought
that they had a Sphynx. After the first breedings, the primary difference was
discovered: the gene that is responsible for the hairlessness or hair losing
tendency of these cats is dominant, where the Sphynx's gene is recessive. This
is to say that, when you breed a Sphynx to a furry cat, the first generation of
kittens will be furry. It is not until about the third generation of breeding
back to hairless Sphynx that the kittens will again be hairless. With the Don
Sphynx, the kittens will be hairless and hair losing in the very first
generation. Therefore, the name was changed to the Don Hairless, and is often
referred to today as the Donskoy or Donsky.
So, now you know of the origins of the
Donsky, but what of the Peterbald, you ask? It was in 1993, in St. Petersburg,
Russia, that a brown mackeral tabby Don Hairless male with a rather refined look, Afinguen Myth
(pictured below left), was mated to a very classy tortie Oriental female, Radma Vom At present, the Peterbald is accepted in Championship status the WCF, one of the major cat organizations in Europe. In TICA, the breed is now in Champion Status. The PD was just approved for Championship Status in ACFA as well, and we will be able to show Peterbald cats for points in the show season beginning in 2009. The CFA does not currently recognize the Peterbald and they can be shown in CFA shows as exhibition only.
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