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American Curl In the Beginning
The made-in-America label can be found on several breeds of cats. In naturally occurring varieties this country has produced the American shorthair and the Maine coon cat. In person-made breeds good old Yankee (or Midwestern or Southern) ingenuity has engineered the exotic shorthair, the ocicat, the snowshoe, the Bengal, and the Bombay. In spontaneous mutations we have the American wirehair and the American curl. We can also lay claim to at least a share in the discovery of the sphynx, which was first exhibited in the United States--under the quaint designation New Mexican Hairless--when this century was still in diapers. (There are, furthermore, several American-made breeds like the California spangled and the American bobtail waiting in the wings.)
One of the most recent American dreams come true is the American curl, which turned up in the persons of two stray kittens in Lakewood, California, in June 1981. Those kittens--a longhaired, black female and her shorthaired, black-and-white traveling companion who was presumed to be her sister--presented themselves at the home of Joe and Grace Ruga.
The black-and-white kitten stayed only a week, then she resumed her travels through Los Angeles County; but the black kitten, who was subsequently named Shulamith, liked the accommodations so well that she decided to hang around and give birth to a new breed of cat.
According to one curl fancier who has written articles about the breed, Shulamith "met from time to time" with gentlemen callers in her neighborhood. About two months after one of these meetings, she had a litter of four. The father of these kittens, which were born on Saturday, December 12, 1981, was thought to be a local boulevardier named Mr. Grey.
The Rugas had noted the firm, upright cartilage of Shulamith's and her departed sister's ears, but they considered this only an oddity at first. When two of Shulamith's kittens developed curled ears, however, the Rugas knew they had found something unique on their doorstep.
What they had found, further breeding would eventually reveal, was that curls' ears are the result of a genetic mutation caused by a dominant gene. As is true with Scottish folds, if a heterozygous curl (one carrying a curl-ear gene and a straight- ear gene) is bred to a straight-eared cat, half their kittens, on average, will develop curled ears. That ratio increases to 75 percent if both parents are heterozygous curls.
A Quick Study
One of Shulamith's kittens, a longhaired, brown-tabby female named Mercedes, went to live with Grace Ruga's sister, Esther Brimlow, in Orange, California. About a year later Grace sent Esther another Curl, this one a longhaired, colorpoint, male with blue eyes, who was also Shulamith's offspring. Thus we can assume that whatever her origins Shulamith was carrying the colorpoint gene.
In June 1983 a young woman named Nancy Kiester, who owned a meat market, made a delivery to Esther Brimlow's house. "When I chanced upon Mercedes with her litter of kittens," Kiester would later recall, "I was hooked."
Kiester kept in touch with Brimlow, and two months later Brimlow gave her two curl kittens: a longhaired, brown-mackerel- tabby female, which Kiester's children named Princess Leah, and her shorthaired, brown-spotted-tabby litter brother named, what else?, Master Luke.
If Kiester had been hooked by curls at first, by the time she got her kittens she "had gone cat crazy. What had been a flash of an idea when I first saw Mercedes had become a steady, burning desire to see this new breed established."
Shortly after she had gotten her kittens, Kiester, who had bred and shown Australian shepherds, read an article about Scottish folds in the Orange County Register. She called Grace Ruga, and they decided to put Shulamith and her grandchildren Luke and Leah on exhibition at a show in Palm Springs, California, on October 23. This would be the first cat show for all concerned.
"The response was warm and wonderful," Kiester wrote the following year. "Since then Joe, Grace, and I have attended a number of shows, and with the help of a very dear and knowledgeable breeder of Scottish Folds, Jean Grimm, we established a proposed breed standard."
It Looks Like ...
That breed standard would eventually specify that curl's ears--which begin to curl when kittens are four to seven days old and which are firm to the touch for at least one third of the distance from the base of the ear upward--should be moderately large, wide at the base, and have rounded tips. The most obvious degree of curl, in which the tips of the ears point toward the center of the back of the skull, is preferred in show-quality cats. As for the rest of the curl: The head is a modified wedge, slightly longer than it is wide; the eyes are large, with an alert, pleasant expression; the body is medium and semi-foreign in type; and the allowable outcrosses are any non-pedigreed domestic cats that fit this description. (Curls breeders are, of course, free to breed their cats to other curls.)
Despite the "warm and wonderful" reception given Curls at shows, Kiester thought at first that it might be a long time before they would be accepted for championship competition. She told the Portland Oregonian in September 1984 that it could be ten years before curls were approved by the Cat Fanciers' Association, but early in 1985 The International Cat Association (TICA) accepted curls for registration. Then, almost as fast as you can say "What are the outcrosses for this breed?, TICA granted longhaired Curls championship status at its annual meeting in September the following year.
"I think," enthused one TICA judge, "that the American Curl is the most exciting event that has happened in the fancy in recent years."
Since then the majority of North American cat associations have accept the curl, in longhair and shorthair varieties, for championship competition.
Personality
Because it is derived by and large from nonpedigreed domestic shorthair cats, the American curl exhibits their range of temperament. Curls are curious but even-tempered, companionable yet self-sufficient, not shy about expressing themselves, but not overly talkative. As the breed matures--it is, after all, only 14 years since it was first accepted for championship competition--its personality will no doubt be molded by increased contact with and dependence upon human beings to the extent that breeders use more curls and fewer cats of unknown origin in their breeding programs.