In 1987 a feral blue tortie & white cat in Montana had a strange looking kitten in a litter of 5. At 9 weeks she came to the attention of Persian breeder Jeri Newman who took the kitten and named her Miss DePesto because she was always pestering for attention. Jeri was able to find out that her mother had hair that was not completely normal either-it had a slight kink right at the end. Miss DePesto had curly whiskers, brillo hair in her ears and the coat on her body looked like a body wave. She had a narrow muzzle with a strong whisker break, prominent cheekbones, slanted eyes and a wide flat spot between her large ears. Like a Cornish Rex, her body was heavy but her boning was fine and her legs were long.

Jeri established that Miss Depesto’s littermates all had normal coats and that there were no other curly cats in the area leading her to believe that Miss DePesto might be the source of a new mutant rex gene. At 14 months of age, Jeri bred Miss DePesto to her black Persian male Ch. Photo Finish of Deekay and eagerly awaited the kittens. On July 14 Miss DePesto had a litter of 6 kittens of which 3 were definitely curly. These results proved that the gene was a dominant, unlike that of the CR and DR, and that Miss DePesto carried longhair. TICA accepted the Selkirk Rex into the New Breed program in 1990 and recognized it for championship competition in February 1994.