The Many Different Textures of Cat Coats
April 15th 2009 21:00
Photo by Whiskthecat. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
It’s amazing how seemingly useless information can have an impact on your life.
Not being familiar with cats until I encountered my ex-neighour’s Bombays, Higgins and Miggins, and my friend’s Tonkinese, Butterscotch and Gingersnap, I thought all cats’ coats had the same texture. This was the case with these four cats. However, ignorant me didn’t pick up on the fact that all four were part Burmese so naturally, they would feel the same. Butterscotch and Gingersnap’s coats were so soft and silky that it led me to nickname them Soft Tonks.
I only made this connection after stroking some cats that live at Susannah Place Museum at the Rocks in Sydney. Lenny and Riley’s coats always felt dusty and firm, not soft like the abovementioned four.
At first I thought this was simply due to the fact Lenny and Riley were outdoor cats. They liked to lie on the pavement outside the Museum so their coats often felt dusty. I attributed the firmness of their coats to their outdoor living conditions.
This was until I read in a book called Your Cat Interpreter by David Alderton that cats, depending on the breed, do have coats that are of different textures. Alderton says:
• Siamese and Orientals do have soft coats
• Breeds such as the British Shorthair have firm coats (Lenny and Riley are domestic shorthairs so they would probably fall under this category)
• Cornish Rexes and Russian breeds have short and silky coats. In contrast, Birman and Balinese have long and silky coats
• The hairless Sphynx’s coat feels like a peach
• Last, but not least, the American Wirehair’s coat feels like lamb’s wool.
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