When a brown tabby barn cat named Speedy produced a litter of kittens in The Dalles, Oregon, in 1982, one of them was bald, with tabby markings on her skin, and big ears that were spaced wide apart. She looked like a little alien from outer space. When her coat began to develop, she looked even more different: it was curly. And that was the name she was given by owner Linda Koehl.
Curly eventually produced her own kittens by various males in the area, including a Siamese and a Manx. All of her kittens shared their mother’s curly coat, the result of a dominant mutation.
Geneticists determined that the cats were distinct from the other rex, or curlycoated, breeds such as the Selkirk Rex, which first appeared in Montana in 1987, or the Devon and Cornish Rexes, which originated in Great Britain.
Eventually, status as a breed was sought for the curlycoated cats. They were given the name LaPerm and achieved recognition from The International Cat Association in 2002. The Cat Fanciers Association also recognizes the breed. To maintain their genetic diversity, LaPerms are outcrossed to nonpedigreed domestic shorthairs and longhairs.