Why Are Sphynx Cats So Popular Now?

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Margaux Cohen was not a cat person.

Didn’t care for them.

Didn’t want to be around them.

Then she met a sphynx.

“He was the nicest cat I had ever met,” she recalls. “I fell in love with him after 10 minutes.” Six months later, she got one of her own.

Cohen, who was living in France at the time but is now based in Vancouver, is one of a growing number of locals who are choosing life with sphynx cats (more colloquially known as bald cats, naked cats or hairless cats, because they have little to no fur—though their skin is still soft like peach fuzz). In terms of pet ownership, sphynx aren’t exactly easy: they are known to be needier than other breeds, for one thing, are often described as being more dog-like than cat-like and require pretty much constant attention.

They also need more maintenance, requiring baths multiple times per month to deal with the oil that builds up on their skin (and that can stain your white sheets—who knew?). They have the lowest life expectancy among domestic cats, and are typically more expensive than other breeds. Then there’s the simple but unignorable fact that these animals aren’t cute—at least not in a traditional sense—which has historically caused many raised eyebrows among non-believers.

Their look is certainly unique: big, marble-like eyes that stare into your soul; tall, pointy ears that resemble a bat’s; thin, spindly legs that look like they could be snapped in half like a toothpick; and naked, wrinkly skin that makes the entire animal seem like it’s been turned inside out. Weird? Very much so. But sphynx cat owners see an unorthodox beauty here.

“I love the way that they look really cute in their ugliness—they look like aliens,” says Cohen. “They’re so cuddly. Even in the evening when I am watching TV, they’re all over me. I hold them like babies and they just purr and purr.”

And while they were once relegated to the pet margins, destined for the dark basements of the freaks and geeks, sphynx cats have built esteem in recent years—which Cohen largely attributes to their proliferation on social media.

“There are definitely more people with sphynx cats now than when I first got one in 2014,” Cohen says, noting that, back then, she only knew one person with a sphynx, and now she has at least six close friends who have one. “They have become way more popular.”

Valerie Jardine is the hobby breeder behind Sphynxcraft Cats in Abbotsford (“Mysterious beauty awaits!” Sphynxcraft’s website promises. “Our Cats will put a spell on you!”) She agrees that social media is helping to give the breed its glory moment.

“There are lots of accounts or people that become obsessed with sphynx,” she says. One is Toronto’s @sphynxcifer,  an “adventure cat” named Lucifer with over 31,000 followers. Then there’s Portland-based TikTok influencer Lindsey Kuzmin, who posts about “life with my hairless cats” and has 719,000 people follow along. There’s even a Los Angeles brand of clothing—sorry, “designer apparel for your hairless cat”—called Sphynx Swag, with more than 61,000 fans on Instagram. Vancouver’s own Blim apparel brand sells a “Hairless Cat” hoodie, though, tellingly, it’s currently sold out.

If you’re still not convinced that sphynx cats have entered the zeitgeist, look no further than Australian actress Nicole Kidman, who told People magazine in March that she was “really going gaga” over hairless cats, causing The Cut to opine that “the actress who has perfected the art of playing someone a little haunted and a little freaky can’t get enough of felines who look like haunted little freaks themselves.”

This boom is not just being felt by consumers. Aside from breeding sphynx, Jardine also shows them at The International Cat Association (TICA) shows, and has noticed a warming from the judges over the last five or so years.

“That part of it is definitely changing,” she says. “Now you’re always seeing judges finalling sphynx cats, whereas before they thought they were just too strange.”

Sphynx convert Cohen currently has two male cats: a sphynx named Nootka and a Devon rex (which looks similar to a sphynx, but has short, visible hair) named Harvey. Her first-ever sphynx, Jodie, is still kicking too, and lives with Cohen’s ex-boyfriend, Thibaud Carouhy.

“They are little Velcro cats,” Carouhy says. “I really fell in love with these little guys. They are very smart and very fun to be around.”

And while newbies would be forgiven for thinking that these cats come from far away, the sphynx breed was actually created right here in Canada. Its origins can be traced back to 1960s Toronto, where one hairless kitten was born among a litter of furry siblings. A University of Toronto science student named Riyadh Bawa identified the kitten’s hairlessness as being caused by a recessive gene, and ended up buying the cat and its mother and mating the two of them. He then mated the male kittens from that litter with female American shorthair cats, and so began the lore of the sphynx.

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Pet breeding is a polarizing subject. Many people subscribe to an “adopt don’t shop” mentality in 2025, believing that no one should shell out thousands of dollars to a breeder when shelters are filled with animals in need of homes.

It’s an understandable argument, especially given that there are plenty of careless and even abusive pet breeders out there. But Jardine argues that buying from a breeder shouldn’t be seen as an ethical failing—so long as you do your research.

“People have a choice of what [pet] they want to get,” she says. (Her sphynx kittens sell for $2,500 each—though, she admits, the costs of running an ethical cattery are so high that she’s not making a profit.) “If you’re choosing a specific breed, support ethical breeders.”

She points to a few red flags, including breeders who don’t do frequent medical testing on their cats, don’t provide kittens with any of their required vaccinations, are willing to remove kittens from their mothers too soon (this should happen no earlier than 11 weeks) and don’t provide any kind of post-purchase support.

There is also growing concern in the ethical breeding community surrounding people who breed sphynx for different mutations (such as elf-like ears), which Jardine says leads to unnecessary health problems and even shorter life spans. TICA posts member breeders on its website, all of whom have to sign a code of ethics. Here, breeders are categorized by type; there are currently 16 sphynx breeders listed in Canada, a quarter of those located in B.C. (including Jardine). By comparison, the leopard-like Savannah breed only has three breeders in the entire country (all of them in Quebec); the squishy-faced Himalayan, meanwhile, has zero Canadian representation.

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When Emma Jaffrey was looking for a sphynx, she came across Jardine and was impressed.

“I did a lot of research about breeders to make sure I was getting one from a legitimate breeder and not a sketchy backyard breeder,” she says. “She still emails about the cats sometimes, even after six years.”

Jaffrey currently has two sphynx cats from Jardine: a boy named Hank and a girl named Consuela (who, bless her little heart, is blind in one eye).

“I always thought they were really cool-looking and weird-looking,” says Jaffrey. “And kind of ugly in the best way.”