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Hair on my sphynx?

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I think my kitty is growing hair - She has 3 patches on her, 1 on each side of her back, like where her hips are and 1 just below her head on her back in between her shoulders.

I swear there is more hair there everyday I look - is this normal? Does it go away?
 
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I live in Pennsylvania and we have pretty harsh winters - also it's usually on the cold side in my house, around 68 degrees. So maybe she's just trying to keep warm!

I never knew they could grow hair like that - thanks for the info

I now know that if she were to be a hairy cat, she would be gray and white :LOL:
 

Gizzymom

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Giz grew some hair on his feet, tail, and his hip in the winter when he was 2, I believe. It fell out the following summer and has never grown back. Who knows? And I agree, Tess... it would not make a bit of a difference to me... He is still my Gizzy :Smile:
 

ypvsypvs

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It happens but to say it is normal is not really good.
No matter weather or hormones a pure bred sphynx should not grow hair (more than fuzz)outside of it's hair zones, they should be genetically programmed not to.
Now, we are dealing with a live being so it will never be 100% up to a written standard but it is still not supposed to happen nor something that should be accepted from a breeding view point.

It is a bit of a hot potatoe though as it can be seen as we don't love our pets as much because of their apearance changing but that is not the question. We all do.
However...
I and most with me I am sure, are or would be, quite dissapointed anyway if our naked cats grew furr, especially if we paid top dollar for our pure bred cats.
We don't have to deny that in the belief that we would seem less affectionate towards our pets, we all know each and every member here loves their sphynxes dearly.

Here the problem is almost unheard of and Scandinavia is cold. We have very regulated breeding and no mills though so it might be a reason. How is Netherlands and Great Britain? Netherlands are famous for good breeders in cats so it would be interesting to hear from Gizmo6370 about how it is there.

My suspicion is that mills and breeders not properly seeking the long term future good of the breed is the main source of this problem. Also the lack of regulations when it comes to registration of ALL pure bred cats must make it much harder to investigate lines even for the ones with the best of intentions thus bad genes (or just wrong ones) easier sneak into the breed and get harder to irradicate.
 
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I was thinking that maybe she doesn't have the purest and best genes a hairless cat can have, one that comes from a good breeder. Since I rescued her - I don't really know where she came from or who the breeder was.

I still love her though. Even though I've only had her for a little over 2 months, she's completely wrapped me around her little paw. Even if she isn't entirely nekid, she'll always be loved :Smile:
 

TotenEngel

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I know the other thing people have mentioned on here realted to hair growth is hormones, has she been spayed or come into heat recently?
 

ypvsypvs

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I know the other thing people have mentioned on here realted to hair growth is hormones, has she been spayed or come into heat recently?

It might be hormonal but it still should not happen.
Hormones can start a genetically programmed process to occur, like in humans during puberty for instance but in Sphynxes that disposition should not be there at all.
It is a rest from the cross breeding with Rexes I would believe since most sphynxes that grow hair do it curly and the two "starter" cats (for our breed) in Canada was not born into a curly litter but one with normal furr.

By now the lines should be cleansed of those residues though and are in many areas in the world it would seem. Or at least very close to it.

If hormones or cold weather starts hair growth (more than peachy fuzz) the cat is NOT pure bred more than on paper. It is a sphynx and it is a beloved pet but it is also a carrier of a gene or two that is not wanted from a breeding stand point.
Harsh?
Maybe but feelings put aside it is so.
Noone here will look down on a Sphynx with hair and no owner with such a cat will love it any less but to answere the original question:
No it is not supposed to happen and if it does there is nothing one can do but shave it and that I would refrain from, not the cats fault after all :Wink:
 

JacksMom

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I have read that this does happen in the winter months to some...jack hasn't grown hair *yet*, but has always had a slightly fuzzy tail, fuzzy nose, ears, and feet.
 

tessblack

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It happens but to say it is normal is not really good.
No matter weather or hormones a pure bred sphynx should not grow hair (more than fuzz)outside of it's hair zones, they should be genetically programmed not to.
Now, we are dealing with a live being so it will never be 100% up to a written standard but it is still not supposed to happen nor something that should be accepted from a breeding view point.

It is a bit of a hot potatoe though as it can be seen as we don't love our pets as much because of their apearance changing but that is not the question. We all do.
However...
I and most with me I am sure, are or would be, quite dissapointed anyway if our naked cats grew furr, especially if we paid top dollar for our pure bred cats.
We don't have to deny that in the belief that we would seem less affectionate towards our pets, we all know each and every member here loves their sphynxes dearly.

Here the problem is almost unheard of and Scandinavia is cold. We have very regulated breeding and no mills though so it might be a reason. How is Netherlands and Great Britain? Netherlands are famous for good breeders in cats so it would be interesting to hear from Gizmo6370 about how it is there.

My suspicion is that mills and breeders not properly seeking the long term future good of the breed is the main source of this problem. Also the lack of regulations when it comes to registration of ALL pure bred cats must make it much harder to investigate lines even for the ones with the best of intentions thus bad genes (or just wrong ones) easier sneak into the breed and get harder to irradicate.

Yes I think you may be right. I can't say that I am not a bit miffed that they have fur. I paid for a hairless and got2 mangey looking creatures. I just love them so much it does not matter but at times I want to shave them. When I got them they were so smooth. Parts of there hair almost curls like they have some devon rex in them. But they are my babies, mange and all.
 

ckutkuhn7

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Snuffie has hair in those areas. It comes and goes as the seasons change. You may also notice, that you can lightly tug at it and it will come right out or when you pet the hairy spots alot, look at your hand, there may be little fuzzies on your hand. Everytime I wash Snuffie or play with her fuzzies they come out some.
 

marlene

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Pedda has the ugliest tail ever. Looks just like a rat tail. But I still love her and wouldn't trade it for anything. She also has a few short broken-looking whiskers. She has a little patch of very soft, short cream colored hair between and behind her shoulder blades and a smidge of the same near her hipbones. She also has fuzz on the bridge of her nose and appears to have a nose bump, but if you smooth it down and look at her profile there's no bump at all. I've noticed that her "fur" gets more pronounced in the summer when I keep the house about 69-70 degrees. I like it warmer in the winter (about 72) and a lot of the fuzzy hair falls out around mid-December. It seems like these few degrees do affect Pedda. Like ckutkuhn7 said, Pedda's fuzz is also very easy to pull out; it seems unstable and I really wouldn't call it "hair" because real hair is harder to yank out.

"Between 1975 and 1978, several natural mutations of hairless kittens were found in Minnesota and Toronto. These kittens, named Epidermis, Punkie, and Paloma, were bred to Devon Rex, another breed with very little body hair. The Sphynx breed traces its history to the offspring of these unions." (This paragraph was quoted from the TICA website). So it probably stands to reason that it wouldn't be terribly unusual to have kitties that show (even partially) Devon traits. True, one might think that after 30 years the unwanted traits would have been bred out; but realistically, 30 years is no time at all when considered in context of the entire evolution of a breed. And it's much more difficult to breed out traits that were incorporated at the very beginning of the breed. I wish I'd be alive in 20 more years, I'd love to know how Sphynx will progress and if they'll become balder.

My suspicion is that mills and breeders not properly seeking the long term future good of the breed is the main source of this problem. Also the lack of regulations when it comes to registration of ALL pure bred cats must make it much harder to investigate lines even for the ones with the best of intentions thus bad genes (or just wrong ones) easier sneak into the breed and get harder to irradicate.

I think 99.9% of the evils in pedigreed cats (actually pedigreed animals of any kind) are the result of alphabet-guy's statement.
 

ypvsypvs

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alphabet-guy
:Hysterical:

Time for an explenation maybe.
When I first got internet at home in 94 (there was not much to see on the net but that's another story) I used Ypvs as a handle in chatrooms etc.
Why?
Well I've raced motorcycles all my life or at least been very into that world when not. Back then I loved 2-stroke road racing bikes and owned a series of 4-cyl Yamaha 2-strokes.
Now this is where it gets a "bit" geeky (and why I bury it deep in a thread so everybody wont read it hehe).
Yamaha and all other brands used different sorts of solutions to get better torque out of their two stroke engines. They were always names with letter combinations and being into tuning engines and especially Yamaha 2-strokes I started using Ypvs.
It reads out
Yamaha Power Valve System :Hysterical::LOL:

Whenever 4 letters is not enough to use as a handle I double it and always did so now it's just me.
 

ktate88

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Niles has really soft hairs on his feet. His nose bridge and ears have just a bit of hair, and his tail has scratchy hairs that I swear more grows... I sometimes mess with it, which he doesn't appreciate.

Just like Tess, I sometimes think about shaving his tail. I haven't done it, but it has crossed my mind form time to time.

He sometimes has short whiskers. He grew a long one on one side of his face...I plucked it. He didn't even move. I thought it'd be a big deal but no reaction at all. Now I don't feel so bad!
 

marlene

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Thanks for the explanation ypvs! I don't mean any offense and hope I didn't upset you; it's because I'm dyslexic. I'm older (52) and have to devise my own coping mechanisms when I see a word my brain just can't understand, so I call you "alphabet-guy" in my mind whenever I see your handle. I can handle ypvs but am afraid anything more sends me into a tailspin. Again, I apologize for any upset I caused you.
 

ypvsypvs

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Niles has really soft hairs on his feet. His nose bridge and ears have just a bit of hair, and his tail has scratchy hairs that I swear more grows... I sometimes mess with it, which he doesn't appreciate.

Just like Tess, I sometimes think about shaving his tail. I haven't done it, but it has crossed my mind form time to time.

He sometimes has short whiskers. He grew a long one on one side of his face...I plucked it. He didn't even move. I thought it'd be a big deal but no reaction at all. Now I don't feel so bad!

Hair on the haired-allowed-zones is not regulated at all actually. A sphynx could have an inch of hair on it's tail, feet and ears theoretically and still not be punished for it in a show. This never happens ofc but there is nothing saying that a show winning sphynx could not look like that.
Whiskers same thing, they may have it but they need to be fragile and broken, not full length.
My Darwin has such whiskers sometimes. They are very fragile though and break easy or even fall off. A few weeks ago he had many, now few. In a month it may be many again, it's ok.
If showing it is (here at least, prob same everywhere) punishable with exclusion to remove hair in any way if they see traces of it.
Privately it's ofc up to taste and weighing the discomfort to the gain in apearance. I doubt there will be any discomfort though if done with a nice touch so shave if you want. Please tell us how it went if you do and what he thought about it :BigSmile:

Thanks for the explanation ypvs! I don't mean any offense and hope I didn't upset you; it's because I'm dyslexic. I'm older (52) and have to devise my own coping mechanisms when I see a word my brain just can't understand, so I call you "alphabet-guy" in my mind whenever I see your handle. I can handle ypvs but am afraid anything more sends me into a tailspin. Again, I apologize for any upset I caused you.

Upset?
Me?
Oh, you will need to do much more than is in your personality (such as I know it) to offend me Marlene. <3
I certainly am not offended by Alphabet-Guy, I very much understand the epithet. Ypvsypvs is not a read out friendly name to say the least. :LOL:

I don't get upset or offended very easily but if I do noone will be in doubt I think :Wink:

If you got the impression that I was it is due to my terrible english, probably lack in nuances without seeing it.

Edit: Forgot a thing.
I have a few friends who are dyslectic. They have done well in life and school but you write exceptionaly compared to them so I am in admiration over how you have handeled a condition that would almost handicap some. There are degrees of it ofc but with you I almost never see traces of it even. Do you spellcheck and control grammar before you post or learned to deal with it in other ways? Or is it more in comprehending texts fast an to the letter that you have problems with? And sorry for asking if you don't wanna talk about it, I understand it might be a bit personal.
If you got diagnosed with dyslexia I am sure you have or once had more problems than is visible to any of us so whatever you have done to tackle it, keep doing it. :D
 

marlene

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Ypvs, I was fortunate in that I had a mother who was a great reader. She started teaching me when I was an infant. I guess I learned how to figure it out when I was a toddler. It's hard for me to explain but the easiest way is that I've learned how to recognize "blocks" of letters as particular words, but each individual letter in a word doesn't mean anything to me.

One strange side effect, I guess, is that it's very easy for me to associate certain symbols (be it a letter of the alphabet or a musical symbol) with certain actions. For example, when reading a sheet of music I didn't have to stop and actually comprehend that the F# I was seeing was an F#; my fingers just automatically went to the correct key on the keyboard or fingering/embouchure on flute and other instruments. It made me a helluva musician lol. And also means that typing is very easy for me, far easier than handwriting for some reason.

The reading/writing parts of the dyslexia don't cause me problems. I don't run an external spell-checker program but admit the built-in spellchecker while I'm writing a post helps a lot. My biggest problem is that I often transpose words and phrases. Thank goodness we can edit our posts, I swear 99% of mine are edited within minutes of being posted.

I'm also told that it's responsible for my stuttering, but we didn't know that when I was a kid. But I was in speech therapy 3x per week from the time I was 4 until I turned 19 (with the exceptions of a few months when I lived in Paris or other times when I was touring). It still gives me problems and often I start to stutter, so I just stop trying to say what I wanted to say and say something else instead. You could hear it happening a couple of times in Pedda's SS video (especially having to be very deliberate when I was reading the card aloud) but I posted it anyways, I figured it wouldn't bother anyone here (it makes my family crazy sometimes).

The biggest problem, though, is that I have a big "directional component" to my dyslexia. I'm one of those people who literally couldn't find their way out of a paper bag. I've lived in my home for 16 years and still manage to get lost 1/2 mile away from home. I get lost coming home from visiting my parents. I can't tell you how many times I've called Pops from a pay phone to come and show me the way home cause I couldn't figure it out. Thank God for techology and portable GPS systems - and that really is a heartfelt thanks, I'm not being facetious! It's made my life so much easier; I wouldn't dream of leaving my driveway without the GPS in my car!

I never really knew there was something wrong that they could put a name on until I was in my early 30's and happened to be talking to a neurologist at work. He had me go in for some tests and that's when I officially learned what was going on.

Bleh, this turned into a ramble. I hope it made sense.
 

ypvsypvs

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Ypvs, I was fortunate in that I had a mother who was a great reader. She started teaching me when I was an infant. I guess I learned how to figure it out when I was a toddler. It's hard for me to explain but the easiest way is that I've learned how to recognize "blocks" of letters as particular words, but each individual letter in a word doesn't mean anything to me.

One strange side effect, I guess, is that it's very easy for me to associate certain symbols (be it a letter of the alphabet or a musical symbol) with certain actions. For example, when reading a sheet of music I didn't have to stop and actually comprehend that the F# I was seeing was an F#; my fingers just automatically went to the correct key on the keyboard or fingering/embouchure on flute and other instruments. It made me a helluva musician lol. And also means that typing is very easy for me, far easier than handwriting for some reason.

The reading/writing parts of the dyslexia don't cause me problems. I don't run an external spell-checker program but admit the built-in spellchecker while I'm writing a post helps a lot. My biggest problem is that I often transpose words and phrases. Thank goodness we can edit our posts, I swear 99% of mine are edited within minutes of being posted.

I'm also told that it's responsible for my stuttering, but we didn't know that when I was a kid. But I was in speech therapy 3x per week from the time I was 4 until I turned 19 (with the exceptions of a few months when I lived in Paris or other times when I was touring). It still gives me problems and often I start to stutter, so I just stop trying to say what I wanted to say and say something else instead. You could hear it happening a couple of times in Pedda's SS video (especially having to be very deliberate when I was reading the card aloud) but I posted it anyways, I figured it wouldn't bother anyone here (it makes my family crazy sometimes).

The biggest problem, though, is that I have a big "directional component" to my dyslexia. I'm one of those people who literally couldn't find their way out of a paper bag. I've lived in my home for 16 years and still manage to get lost 1/2 mile away from home. I get lost coming home from visiting my parents. I can't tell you how many times I've called Pops from a pay phone to come and show me the way home cause I couldn't figure it out. Thank God for techology and portable GPS systems - and that really is a heartfelt thanks, I'm not being facetious! It's made my life so much easier; I wouldn't dream of leaving my driveway without the GPS in my car!

I never really knew there was something wrong that they could put a name on until I was in my early 30's and happened to be talking to a neurologist at work. He had me go in for some tests and that's when I officially learned what was going on.

Bleh, this turned into a ramble. I hope it made sense.

No ramble, I read with great interest. Thanks for answering.

And about directional problems, that's just being (I'm so gonna die now) woman.
:Hysterical::LOL:

*raising shields against incoming slaughter*
:Cool:
 

MissMySphynxBoys

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:Hysterical:

Time for an explenation maybe.
When I first got internet at home in 94 (there was not much to see on the net but that's another story) I used Ypvs as a handle in chatrooms etc.
Why?
Well I've raced motorcycles all my life or at least been very into that world when not. Back then I loved 2-stroke road racing bikes and owned a series of 4-cyl Yamaha 2-strokes.
Now this is where it gets a "bit" geeky (and why I bury it deep in a thread so everybody wont read it hehe).
Yamaha and all other brands used different sorts of solutions to get better torque out of their two stroke engines. They were always names with letter combinations and being into tuning engines and especially Yamaha 2-strokes I started using Ypvs.
It reads out
Yamaha Power Valve System :Hysterical::LOL:

Whenever 4 letters is not enough to use as a handle I double it and always did so now it's just me.


I have to laugh at myself.
I looked at your user name for weeks after your first joined. Yamaha power value system came to me one day but I dismissed it because repeated letters threw me off.
 

Gizzymom

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No ramble, I read with great interest. Thanks for answering.

And about directional problems, that's just being (I'm so gonna die now) woman.
:Hysterical::LOL:

*raising shields against incoming slaughter*
:Cool:

I will let that one slide... but only because I am COMPLETELY directionally challenged!!:Hysterical:
 
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