History and Characteristics of LaPerm (1)

One of the most distinctive features of LaPerm is its curly hair.

The curly hair feels good on the skin and looks cute.

However, there are several other species of curly-haired cats besides the LaPerm, so if you pay attention to the differences between them and the LaPerm, you will understand why the LaPerm is so unique.

History

The LaPerm is a cat breed that originated from a single cat that was born with curly hair due to a mutation. (Ref.1)

In 1982, a female cat with curly hair was one of the kittens born to a female cat named “Speedy” who was kept to ward off rats at a cherry orchard in The Dalles, Oregon, USA. The farmer named her “Curly”.

For a while, the curly-haired cat mated naturally with other cats on the farm, but since curly hair was a dominant trait, the number of curly-haired cats on the farm increased. The neighbors began to take notice of the rare cat.

In 1992 (according to Dennis Ganoe’s journal), the farmer decided to take the curly-haired cat to a CFA cat show to get advice about this rare cat. With the help of a breeders and judges who was there, a breeding program was started for LaPerm.

In 1995, the LaPerm was registered as a New Breed Class by TICA, and in 2003, the LaPerm was awarded Campionship Status by TICA, meaning it was recognized as a breed by the Cat Registry

(*The fact that Curly was “hairless” at birth is often mentioned in books and websites about the history of the LaPerm, but modern LaPerm are almost never born hairless, and focusing on “hairlessness” can lead to a false perception of the LaPerm.)

Comparison with other cat breeds

Curly-haired cats have occurred frequently in many parts of the world throughout history. (Reference 2)

However, in modern times, there are four main cat breeds that are well established and have breeders all over the world. (Ref.1, 3, 4, 5)

Cat breeds	Year of occurrence	Year of registration with the Cat Registry	First cat’s name	Crossbreeding methods in the early stages of cat breed development	Dominant or recessive inheritance
Cornish Rex	1950	1967(GCCF)	Kallibunker	Human controlled mating	Recessive
Devon Rex	1960	1967(FIFe)	Kirlee	Human controlled mating	Recessive
LaPerm	1982	2003(TICA)	Curly	Natural crossing	Dominant
Selkirk Rex	1987	1992(TICA)	Miss DePesto of Noface	Human controlled mating	Incomplete dominant

What is important to note here is the number of years between the occurrence of the original cat and the registration of the breed with the Cat Registry, as well as the initial breeding method.

The Cornish and Devon are recessive. This means that they are an established cat breed as a result of breeders controlling breeding so that recessive genetic traits appear.

On the other hand, the Selkirk and the LaPerm are dominantly inherited, which means that if one cat is released into the wild, all the cats everywhere will have curly hair. In fact, in the case of the LaPerm, the farmer finally realized that it might be a rare cat when all the cats on the farm were covered in curls.

In the case of the Selkirk, the breeder controlled the breeding from the beginning, just like the Cornish and Devon. Moreover, it took only five years for the breed to be registered.

The five years after the first LaPerm was found were when they were still being bred freely on farms. Full-scale cat breed development had not yet begun.

Compared to other curly-haired cat breeds, the LaPerm was not controlled by breeders in the early stages of development (and that was for 10 years!), so they were established as a cat breed with no unusual physical characteristics. This is an important point in understanding the LaPerm.

The cat breed standard states the following (Ref. 6)

TICA
- It is medium-sized and curly-coated, with a semi-foreign type body. (omitted) All parts of the body are in harmony with the size of the cat.
CFA
- It is medium sized, curly coated with moderate type. (omitted) All parts of the body are in harmony with the size of the cat.
GCCF
- It is medium-sized with a moderate foreign body type, well balanced overall (omitted)
FIFe
- It is medium-sized with a moderate foreign body type, well balanced overall (omitted)