Ural Rex

😺 Temperament

🏡 Best suited to

📊 Personality ratings

📜 History & origin

The Ural Rex takes its name from the Ural region of Russia, where the spontaneous curly-coat mutation behind it was recorded as far back as the 1940s, though organised breeding did not begin until the late 1980s and 1990s. It is a genuinely distinct rex breed: its curl is caused by a recessive gene unrelated to the genes behind the better-known Cornish or Devon Rex, and breeders prize the Ural's waves as among the most elastic and durable of all the rex coats. The breed remains very rare, with most cats found in Russia and Germany, and it is recognised by only a limited number of registries.

🧼 Care & grooming

The short, wavy coat needs little more than occasional gentle brushing, and because the curl is robust it is less prone to the thin, fragile patches seen in some other rex breeds. Like most rex cats the Ural has somewhat less coat than a normal cat, so it appreciates warmth and a cosy bed in cold weather. Temperamentally the breed asks chiefly for company: Urals are strongly people-oriented, like to be near their owners and can be sensitive to being left alone for long periods, so they suit households where someone is often home or where a companion animal keeps them company.

🩺 Health notes

The Ural Rex is generally a hardy, long-lived breed with no widely-documented breed-specific hereditary diseases, helped by a broad foundation gene pool. Because the curl gene is recessive, responsible breeders manage matings carefully to maintain genetic diversity. As with any cat, routine vaccination, parasite control, dental care and good nutrition are the foundations of a long, healthy life — and many Urals live well into their late teens.

📸 Ural Rex photos

Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, used under their respective licences.