Did you know that the AGA has a long history of publishing about cats? Not just the beloved felines that have commandeered many homes and communities (not to mention ecologically devastating many areas…), but also their wild brethren. In fact, Darwin even mentioned cats in his Origin of Species, where he discussed the relationships between both blue eyes and deafness as well as calico coloration and sex. In the next few blog posts I am going to describe some of the work published about our feline friends in the Journal of Heredity. A reminder to all our members, you get free access to the articles mentioned from your membership homepage on the website!
This post features articles from the latter portion of the 1930s, featuring the saga of hairless cats, from the birth of one named Nonesuch to her first litter of kittens! Stay tuned for some cats that definitely don’t like the cold….
“CAT-DOG” from North Carolina
Folks, I kid you not, that is the real title. The article (in somewhat objectionable language) describes a litter of kittens in which “only one of the kittens is perfectly normal in appearance—the other three being freaks”. What was apparently so appalling about the kittens, you ask? Well, two of the three “abnormal” kittens had shortened tails, and the third *gasp* HAD NO HAIR!!
The author says there were several instances of the mother cat fighting with a neighborhood dog, and implies that “…this is about the only plausible explanation as to why the “nonesuch” is so unusual in appearance. In fact, this little animal—now about two months old—is about the queerest looking creature one could hope to set eyes upon. Its face is that of a black, white, and yellow spotted dog. Its ears are quite long and sharp- pointed. It has the short whiskers of a puppy. The hind legs are amusingly bowed. It has a stub tail.” I guess the author is trying to suggest that the mother cat had such a strong “impression” of the dog during pregnancy that she decided to have dog-like kittens?
The author also says that little Nonesuch was born with her eyes open (although he didn’t meet the kitten until she was two months old, so there is no verification of this…), likes to chew on bones, and is content to watch its siblings play rather than join in. I think it’s safe to say the author had never seen the eldritch horror that is a wet cat (which is where you can tell that they look quite different without all the adorable fluff), had not been around teething kittens, and couldn’t understand why a naked kitten wouldn’t want to roughhouse with its siblings without the layer of protective hair to ward off needle-like kitten claws.
I am relieved to say that the editor’s note suggests that this may simply be a recessive trait similar to that in Rex rabbits rather than some sort of effect due to maternal impression. No mention of the stubby tails, however (more on that later in this series of posts!).
“NONESUCH” HAS A BIRTHDAY—AND KITTENS
Hot diggity dog, Nonesuch had her first birthday and a completely “normal” litter of kittens! However, the author Mr. Sternberger, is still claiming that she looks like a terrier:
“Nonesuch is very dog-like in her actions, in spite of the fact that she makes a noise like a cat and retracts her claws as a cat would do. When she hears a sudden, unexpected noise, she raises her right forepaw and curls it slightly under, just as a pointer would do. Nonesuch becomes alert as a dog if someone whistles for her. She stretches out her forepaws in a dog-like manner while resting.”
I wonder what Mr. Sternberger would have done if he encounter the Shiba Inu breed of dog? For they are said to be very cat-like in their mannerisms….
Hairless Siamese Cats
The plot thickens! Or in this case, gets more naked…
Coming to us from France is an account of some purebred Siamese cats who, on occasion had hairless kittens. Breeders were then able to create a strain of true-breeding (aka homozygous) cats. They also noticed that if the true-breeding hairless cats were mated to a wild-type (aka hairy) cat that the offspring would all have the normal phenotype–classic autosomal recessive inheritance (although, it is not 100% clear from the article if they tested this with both sexes of hairless cat to rule out sex-linked, but I am assuming they did).
There are more detailed remarks about transitory hairiness whereby sometimes the hairless cats develop a bit of downy coat in the colder months, or are even born with a bit of hair that is lost by adulthood. More often than not, the hair appears on the belly and legs.
The Origin of the Mexican Hairless Cat
Rounding out our adventure in to naked cats, our final article of the 1930s is about a hairless breed of cat that was exhibited in the early 1900s but thought to be extinct by the 1930s. While the hairless cats from the previous articles occasionally had hair on their bellies and legs, the Mexican Hairless Cat was said to have a strip of hair along its backbone and tail in the colder months.
This breed was thought to descend from “scant-haired” cats from South America described by Johann Rudolph Rengger in the 1800s. These cats were smaller than their European counterparts and Rengger supposed that they had reduced body size and hair due to the climate of Paraguay. It was even thought by some that the scant-haired cats were descendants of jaguarundis or hybrids (turns out that jaguarundis have the same number of chromosomes as the domestic cat [2n=38] but hybrids are extremely rare to non-existent). Either way, this breed is now extinct.
In case you were wondering what mutation is the cause of all this nakedness, it turns out that Keratin 71 is the culprit behind what are now mostly known as Sphinx cats. There is a 43 base pair insertion in one of the introns that essentially makes it impossible for the cellular machinery to correctly identify where to cut out the intron, so two exons are fused together. This was confirmed in 2010, and is the same get responsible for hairless dogs, mice, and rats (Gandolfi et al., 2010).
Gandolfi B, Outerbridge CA, Beresford LG, Myers JA, Pimentel M, Alhaddad H, Grahn JC, Grahn RA, Lyons LA. The naked truth: Sphynx and Devon Rex cat breed mutations in KRT71. Mamm Genome. 2010 Oct;21(9-10):509-15. doi: 10.1007/s00335-010-9290-6. Epub 2010 Oct 16. PMID: 20953787; PMCID: PMC2974189.
About the Author
Miranda Wade
received her B.S. in Biological Science from Colorado State University and her dual PhD in Integrative Biology and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Behavior from Michigan State University. During her time in the Meek Lab at MSU, her work consisted of using ‘omics to address various conservation questions about land-use change and microplastics exposure. She is currently the Social Media Editor for the American Genetic Association and a PostDoc in the Sin Lab at the University of Hong Kong. For her postdoctoral work, she is exploring the genomic basis of coloration in birds. She is the proud owner/caretaker of three cats.