|
|
Devon Rex
The Devon Rex is a medium-sized shorthair cat. The
slender body is carried on long and slender legs with dainty oval
paws.
The bone structure of the Devon Rex is medium-fine, when lifting up
the cat it is surprisingly heavy. The cat is very muscular, and the
muscles are firm to touch.
The rib cage is full and deep, the front legs are bow-legged, thus the
legs appear shorter than they are.
The tail is long and tapered.
The head of the Devon Rex is short (a short wedge) with prominent
and high set cheek bones.
The nose is short and shows a deep stop between the eyes. The muzzle
is broad, short and rounded and shows a whisker break.
The neck is slender.
The ears are very large, very broad and open at their base. They are
set very low on the head, very characteristic is the ear-muff.
The eyes are large, not completely round. They can have any colour,
there is no relation between coat colour and eye colour.
The short head with its prominent cheekbones, the huge ears and the
short muzzle give the Devon that typical elfin look.
Die Augenbrauen und die Schnurrhaare sind sehr steif und gekräuselt.
Es ist wichtig, dass Devon Rex Schnurrhaare haben.
The coat is short, fine and soft. The coat does not have too much
undercoat. The very specific feature of the Rex-coat are the waves.
When the coat is smoothed with the hand, a rippled wave effect is
apparent. Along the neck and on the under parts the coat is very thin.
The coat can have any colour, any pattern, the colours may appear with
white or without white, there are also existing Colourpoints which are
called Si-Rex.
All colors and patterns
The Devon Rex exists in all colors and patterns:
 | white |
| black, blue chocolate, lilac, red, cream, cinnamon, fawn |
| tortie, blue-cream, chocolate tortie, lilac tortie,
fawn tortie |
| in all tabby patterns, for example: black spotted, red mackerel,
blue-cream tabby, etc. |
| with silver or as Golden, for example: blue smoke, tortie
smoke, blue-cream smoke, black golden shaded, blue golden mackerel,
red silver tabby, chocolate tortie silver spotted, cream
silver mackerel, etc. |
| with white (Bicolor, Van, etc.), for example: black-white Bicolour,
red-white Van, tortie mackerel Bicolour, cream smoke with white,
black silver tabby Bicolour, etc. |
| also in Colourpoint, with white and without white, silver- or
Golden-pointed, tabby pointed, etc. |
Origin
The first Devon Rex was born in September 1959 in Buckfastleigh,
Devon. Miss Beryl Cox and Miss Margaret Croll lived near an old
abandoned tin mill, and took care of feral stray cats. One wild living
male, a longhaired, curly coated black tomcat, mated one of her feral
cats, a tortie and white female, which Mrs. Cox had sheltered. The
female gave birth to a litter, where one brownish-black male had lots
of curls, she named him Kirlee.
Ten years earlier, another curly kitten had been found in Cornwall,
England. This kitten was named "Kallibunker". A group of interested
breeders had started a breeding program with Kallibunker. The first
litter, born after Kallibunker, resulted in all straight haired
kittens. When breeding them back to Kallibunker, 50% of the kittens
had a curly coat. The breeders advertised one of their curly kittens,
named Du-Bu Lambtex (out of Du Bu cattery of Mrs. Alice Watts), as the
only rexed cat in the Daily Mirror.
When Mrs. Cox read the article she made contact with the breeders,
informing them that she had another rexed cat, Kirlee. When Mrs. Watts
and her daughter Susan visited Mr. Cox, they convinced her to sell
Kirlee to Mr. Brian Stirling-Webb, a well known judge and rex breeder,
Kirlee was to be integrated into the Rex breeding program. Kirlee was
mated with several Rex queens, but all litter had straight hairs.
Thus it turned out that the genetic make up of Kallibunker and Kirlee
must be different. The first was called Rex Gene I, the ancestors of
the Cornish Rex, and the second after Kirlee was called Rex Gene II,
the ancestor of today's Devon Rex.
Mrs. P. Hughes had kept one of the straight-coated females, named
Broughton Golden Rain, cream-white, which was bred back to Kirlee in
1961. In the litter was a little curled blue-cream female. Thus it was
proven that the Cornwall Rexes (after Kallibunker) were genetically
different from the Devonshire Rexes (born after Kirlee).
In May 1964 the
Rex Cat Club,
member of GCCF,
was founded in England by Madge Shrouder-May (cattery Hassan) and Agnes Watts (cattery
Du-Bu). 1967 the Devon Rex was accepted for competition by GCCF.
1962 Mrs. Alison Ashford (Annelida Cattery) brought the first Devon
Rex, named Broughm, from England to America. The first North American
breeding program of Devon Rex was established in 1968 in Canada
importing cats from Annelida cattery (Mrs. Alison Ashford's cattery).
1972 ACFA was the first North American registry to recognize the Devon
Rex as a separate breed.
In CFA the Devon Rex was grouped amongst the Cornish Rex. It took a
long time, until CFA recognized the Devon in 1979 as a separate breed.
Genetics
Devon Rex were born due to a natural mutation.
According to Roy Robinson Cornish Rex, Devon Rex and Selkirk Rex are
genetically different,
Article from 08.06.1971:
'New data demonstrate that the Cornish and German Rex mutants are
either identical or are phenotypically closely similar alleles at the
same locus. The Devon rex is definitely independent of Cornish and it
seems probable that the Oregon rex is independent of Cornish and
Devon.'
In
Genetica, Publisher Springer Netherlands, ISSN 0016-6707 (Print)
1573-6857 (Online), Volume 42, Number 4 / December, 1971, DOI
10.1007/BF00122078
In Robinson's Genetics for Cat Breeders & Veterinarians,
4th edition, published by REPP Ltd., 1999, ISBN 0 7506 4069 3, the
following naming convention is suggested:
| for Cornish Rex the letter r, recessive inheritance |
| for Devon Rex the letter re, recessive inheritance |
| German Rex seems to be an allele of the Cornish Rex |
| for Oregon Rex the letter ro, recessive inheritance,
has probably died out |
| for Selkirk Rex the letter Se, dominant inheritance |
Test mating between Devon Rex and Cornish Rex has shown, that
both are different. Kittens with straight hairs were born,
heterozygous for both Loci (Rr Rere).
One must wait, what the results of the
DNA-studies of Dr. Leslie Lyons will show concerning the subject
of Rexing.
Breeding
Most cats have blood type A. But in Devon Rex a high percentage has
blood type B. And this can cause severe survival problems for the
kittens, if their mother has blood type B and the father has blood
type A, as very strong antibodies are built in blood type B against
blood type A.
Therefore Devon Rex should be blood typed before used for breeding.
© katzenzeitung 4/2007 |
|
|
