Sphynx Origin

Very often, when people first get acquainted with Sphynx cats , who associate the concept of “sphinx” with ancient Egypt, the pyramids, pharaohs and the Nile Valley, the question arises: “Why is this sphinx called Donskoy or Canadian? What does he have to do with Don? And few people know that the young aboriginal Russian breed, known as the Russian hairless cat, is the Don Sphynx.

Let’s turn to history. Hairless cats appeared several times next to a person. They met in ancient Egypt. The Egyptians deified them and assigned them a very honorable role, decorating their temples with stone figures of sphinxes. There is evidence that the Aztecs had hairless cats. Further in the 1920s, hairless cats were found in Mexico. In the 1930s, sphinxes were found in Paraguay, India and Morocco. But they gradually disappeared. And only in 1966, the Sphynx breed was formed in the province of Ontario, when a person paid close attention to an unusual cat and started breeding a new breed of cats.

 The history of the domestic hairless cat breed began in 1986 in Rostov-on-Don. Once Elena Kovaleva, returning home from work, took away a little kitten from the boys, whom they shamelessly tortured. The kitten turned out to be a cat, in which, after a while, the hair on its back began to come out. The hostess suggested that the kitty (she was named Varvara) was simply sick. The treatment did not lead to anything, the cat’s back remained hairless. As a result of numerous veterinary studies, experts determined that the animal was healthy, and Varvara was left alone. In 1990, Varvara gave birth to a litter of three kittens from a European shorthair cat, Vasily. Their daughter Chita is the founder of the breed. The felinologist Irina Nemykina, now included in the history of world felinology, took up the breeding of new cats. And then, through many years of breeding work, Irina Nemykina received the now world-famous breed of cats – the Don Sphynx. In 1996 this breed was registered with the WCF.