Why do some cats have long hair?

 

Did the very first cats have long hair or short hair?

 

What decides how long a cat’s fur will be?

 

And what stops long hair on a cat from just growing, growing, and growing?

 

There’s fascinating history and science in the story of long hair in cats. Long hair in cats is woven into the saga of the ancient migration of cats around the world.

 

And even before that, long hair in cats is related to the story of the evolution of cats. It’s evidence of cats’ amazing ability to adapt to living almost anywhere.

 

And finally, the story of long hair in cats is also the story of humans and our love affair with cats. Evolution aside, it was often people who decided which traits in cats to preserve.

 

Thankfully, that included long hair.

Did short-haired cats or long-haired cats come first?

 

Short-haired cats came first. There are two important facts that support this conclusion:

 

• Our house cats are descended from the African Wildcat (Felis lybica). The African Wildcat is short-haired.

 

• Egyptian art and mummified cat remains provide some of the earliest, most extensive, and well-documented records of domesticated cats, dating back to 4,000 B.C.E.[1] Egyptian cats are very clearly short-haired.

As an aside, the oldest known pet cat was actually found on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, not Egypt. That cat lived 4,000 years before the civilization of Egypt began. It was an eight-month-old kitten, buried in a shallow grave next to the grave of its owner.

 

Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing if the Neolithic pet cat in Cyprus was short- or long-haired.[2]

 

Where did the first long-haired cats come from?

 

I’ll get to how cats get long hair in a moment. First, let’s address where the first long-haired cats came from.

 

The answer is…nobody knows exactly. There are several plausible theories. What follows is not a complete list of all the theories, just the most likely of them.

 

Did long-haired cats come from Russia?

 

One possibility is that long hair in cats popped up in Russia first and then spread to Persia (today’s Iran) and Turkey. Siberian cats and Russian Angoras could have become Turkish Angoras and Persian cats.

 

The fact that these breeds all have cold-climate features including a dense undercoat, coarse hair, and a heavy build, supports this idea.

 

Did long-haired cats come from Turkey?

 

Alternatively, long hair in cats could have arisen in Turkey first. Long-haired cats could have been carried along trade routes by merchants traveling from Turkey to Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East.

 

Did long-haired cats emerge in different places at the same time?

 

Another thought is that long hair could have emerged in all three locations: Russia, Persia, and Turkey, at more or less the same time.

 

We know that gene mutations for curly hair and bobbed tails in cats have surfaced separately in different locations at different times in history. It’s no big leap to imagine that the mutations for long hair happened the same way.[3]

 

It makes sense that cat populations in completely separate cold-climate areas simultaneously developed long hair to protect them from freezing temperatures.

 

Eventually, long-haired cats made their way around the globe

 

While we may never know where long hair in cats started, we do know that they were first seen in Europe in the 1500s. It’s believed that soldiers brought some long-haired cats home with them from The Crusades.

 

The first documented import of a long-haired cat to Europe happened in Italy in 1520. Pietro della Valle imported a long-haired cat from Persia.

 

In France, about a hundred years later, Nicholas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc imported a long-haired cat from Turkey.

 

Eventually, the Turkish Angoras and the Persians were deliberately bred with each other, leading to a jumble of breed genetics. This is where human interference (and a desire to preserve long-hairedness in cats) comes in.

 

Eventually long-haired cats would come to America as ships’ cats. These cats founded the Maine Coon breed.

How do cats get long hair?

 

The key to any change in a species is genetic mutation. This includes long hair in an otherwise short-haired animal species.

 

What is a genetic mutation?

 

A genetic mutation is a “mistake” that happens when cells divide.

 

Before I explain why cells divide and how those mistakes are made, I want to point out that “mistakes” are literally the reason you and I and cats are living on this planet together.

 

Mistakes/mutations are the raw material of evolution. Without mutations, all 5 billion, or 50 billion, or 1 trillion[4][5][6] (depending upon whom you ask) plants, animals, and microorganisms that have ever lived on this planet would have never existed.

 

We would all still be primitive, single-celled organisms living in a boiling-hot sea.

 

Thanks to more than 4 billion years of mutations, life on Earth today is as diverse as a tiger is from a bacteria and a giant Sequoia tree.[7]

 

Why do cells divide?

 

Mutations happen during cell division.

 

Cats and humans all start off as a single cell in their mothers’ wombs, called a zygote. One cell eventually becomes an entire living thing made up of trillions of cells[8] thanks to cell division.

 

That very first cell, the zygote, literally splits in half to make two cells. Those two cells each split to make four cells. And so on, and so on, and so on, until you have enough cells to make an entire cat or human.

 

That kind of splitting-in-half cell division continues even once we’re out of the womb. Body cells get damaged, or get old and worn out, and need to be replaced. Our bodies' cells are constantly dividing and renewing themselves.

 

Mistakes happen during cell division

 

I made it sound easy, but cell division is a complicated process. Most of the time, all goes as planned. But occasionally, there are errors.

 

If that error or mutation is bad enough, it can cause disease, like cancer. But errors that occur during ordinary cell division only affect that individual person or animal.

 

Some mutations can be inherited

 

There’s another kind of cell division that happens only when the body manufactures sperm and egg cells. It’s more complicated than ordinary cell division, and there is a lot more room for error.[9]

 

When a cell is dividing to make a sperm or egg cell, it actually forms four (not two) new cells. Each of the new cells have only half the normal number of chromosomes. This is so that later, when a sperm and egg cell fuse to make a zygote, the zygote will have the correct number of chromosomes.

 

But the most important thing to understand about mutations that happen during the creation of sperm and egg cells is that those mutations can be passed on to the next generation of cats or humans.

 

They are inheritable mutations.

 

What do mutations have to do with long hair in cats?

 

Most mutations are probably never noticed. But some mutations cause harm, while others are beneficial. 

The long-hair mutation was incredibly helpful. A cat born with long hair in Siberia would have natural protection from the weather.

 

Cats with long fur in a cold climate wouldn’t require as many calories to keep warm. So, they wouldn’t have had to hunt as often, or would have been less likely to starve in bad times.

 

A long-haired cat might be less susceptible to disease or more able to fight off an illness than a short-haired cat.

 

Consequently, a long-haired cat might outlive his short-haired friends, getting to reproduce and pass on his long-haired genes to generations upon generations of kittens.

 

This is how natural selection works.

 

How does the mutation for long hair in cats work?

 

There is one gene in which the long-hair mutation occurs called fibroblast growth factor 5, known as FGF5 for short.

 

The mutation (actually, mutations – there are four), messes around with the hair growth cycle.

 

The hair growth cycle has four stages:

 

Anagen, in which the hair is growing.

Catagen, in which the hair is transitioning from growing to resting.

Telogen, in which the hair is resting, but still firmly rooted in the follicle, and

Exogen, in which the hair is being shed.[10]

 

The long-hair mutations all work by delaying the transition between the anagen and catagen phases.[11] Just when the hair is supposed to be thinking about resting, it keeps growing.

 

By the way, this growth cycle is why hair doesn't just keep growing and growing and growing, in cats or in humans. 

 

We all have a genetically predetermined growth cycle which determines the maximum amount of time our hair will stay in the anagen portion of the sequence.

 

What are the four long-hair mutations?

 

Three of the mutations are specific to a breed, but the fourth mutation variation is found in all long-haired cats.[12]

 

Mutation 1 – is found in Ragdolls

Mutation 2 – is found in Norwegian Forest Cats

Mutation 3 – is found in Maine Coon cats and Ragdolls

Mutation 4 – all long-haired cats have this mutation

 

How is long hair inherited?

 

The long-hair mutation is recessive.

 

This means that a cat has to inherit the gene twice, from both mom and dad, to have long hair.

 

A cat could inherit one copy of the short-hair gene from one parent and one copy of the long-hair gene from the other parent, but unless he has two copies of the long-hair gene, he will be short haired.

 

This means that short-haired cats can carry the long-hair gene and produce long-haired kittens. Two short-haired cat parents could theoretically produce an entire litter of long-haired kittens.

 

Fun fact about cat-hair genetics

 

There’s actually a very rare recessive short-hair gene that has been seen in some lines of Persian cats.

 

Thanks to this crazy gene, matings of two long-haired Persians can produce short-haired kittens!

 

How does long hair differ from short hair in cats?

 

Cat hair is very variable, whether short or long.

 

Short hair can be very dense and plush, like the fur of a British Shorthair. Or, it can be sleek and close-lying, like the coat of a Siamese.

 

Long hair can be wooly, thanks to a thick undercoat, like a Siberian’s. Or, it can be silky, fine, and soft like a Birman’s.

 

Length varies, too. Persians have long, flowing tresses, while the Turkish Angora sports a semi-long coat.

 

But in general, short hair in cats is less than two inches long, and long hair in cats is up to five inches long.

 

Are house cats the only cats with long hair?

 

Long hair mutations have shown up in wild-cat species too.

 

A mutation that causes cheetahs to have wooly, semi-long-haired fur was last observed in the in the late 1800s. It’s extinct now, probably due to trophy hunters.[13]

 

Should you get a long-haired cat or a short-haired cat?

 

I haven’t personally chosen a cat based on hair length, and I’ve had both long- and short-haired cats.

 

Long-haired cats do require more grooming, and it has to be committed grooming. If you don’t groom a long-haired cat regularly, the cat will develop hair mats. Matted hair is not just unsightly; it is dangerous and painful.

 

Read more about matted hair in cats in this post.

 

While both short- and long-haired cats shed equally, some say that long-haired cats appear to shed more.

 

I’ve had the opposite experience. I find shed short cat hair fluttering everywhere, while shed long cat hair seems to stay stuck amongst the other hairs on a cat’s body until I brush it out.

 

Shed long hair that separates from a cat’s body tends to fall off in clumps, unlike shed single short hairs that land on every surface of the house.

 

What cat breeds have long hair?

 

Look at all of these beauties!

 

Persian

Himalayan

LaPerm

Maine Coon

Norwegian Forest Cat

Ragdoll

Ragamuffin

Siberian

Selkirk Rex

American Bobtail

Birman

Japanese Bobtail

Pixiebob

Turkish Angora

Turkish Van

How do you take care of a cat's long hair?

 

Most cats actually enjoy gentle grooming. If yours doesn’t, don’t force your cat to submit. Do as much combing or brushing as she will tolerate and then come back for more later.

 

How often should I brush/comb my long-haired cat?

 

You should groom as frequently as your cat’s individual coat demands.

 

A cat with a fine, silky, long coat, might only need a quick comb-through once or twice a week.

 

A cat with a thick, wooly undercoat might need a daily brushing.

 

If your cat is older and unable to groom himself as efficiently as he once did, you may need to help more often than you did when he was younger.

 

What tools should I use to groom my long-haired cat?

 

(*Note: As an Amazon Associate I may earn from qualifying purchases)

 

Slicker brush

 

Start with a slicker brush first. Gently part the fur into sections with your hand. Brush the fur with slicker in every direction so that you’re brushing the topside, underside, and sides of each section.

 

A simple slicker brush with plain pins, like this one from Burt’s Bees, is all you need.

 

Comb

 

Next, comb through the sections you just brushed. A comb will help further detangle and find hidden mats.

 

You can use a simple stainless steel comb, like this one from Andis, or a detangling comb with short and long tines and a handle, like this one. You may need to try both types to see which one works better in your cat's fur, and which one feels more comfortable in your hand.

 

This video does an even better job of explaining it than me:

If your long-haired cat has become seriously matted, bring her to a groomer to have the mats carefully shaved. Do not use scissors to remove matted fur from cats. Mats form so close to the skin that they’re impossible to remove with scissors without cutting the cat’s skin, too.

 

Love Pinterest? Here's a Pinterest-friendly pin for your boards!

 

 

Dawn LaFontaine

Dawn LaFontaine is a lifelong animal lover who always seems to have a little pet hair in her keyboard. Her blog, Kitty Contemplations, helps cat guardians better understand and care for the special beings they share their lives and homes with. Her cat-products business, Cat in the Box, sells beautiful, well-made, and award-winning products that she designed to meet the biological needs of cats.