American Wirehair

Although cats with wiry coats were reported in Britain and elsewhere following World War 2, none was established, and the origins of today's wirehair's can be traced back to the red and white kitten born on a farm in Verona, New York, in the 1960s. News of this kitten reached a local rexbreeder who obtained both the male kitten and normally coated sister. The program then undertaken by the breeder to establish the wire-haired mutation first entailed pairing brother and sister together. It soon emerged that the wirehair characteristic is dominant and, provided one parent is wirehair, a proportion of wire-haired kittens will occur in the litter. Crossings with American Shorthairs were later used to develop the breed.