A slender short coated cat with large ears curled on a worn armchair in soft window light

Published November 2, 2026 · The Cat Identifier Editorial Team · fact-checked against the sources below

The Devon Rex and the Cornish Rex are the two curly-coated cats that get confused most, and the single best tell in a photo is the ears. The Cat Fanciers’ Association wants a Devon’s ears “strikingly large and set very low,” flaring out past the line of the face. It wants a Cornish Rex’s ears “erect and alert; set high on the head.” Low and wide, or high and upright.

The coat is why they are two breeds. The Cornish Rex coat is “completely free of guard hairs,” and CFA disqualifies a Cornish with any. The Devon Rex keeps some guard hairs, sparse, short and curled, which gives it a looser, more open wave. Two different genes produce the two coats, so neither breed is a variety of the other.

Why are they two breeds and not one?

Because the curls came from two unrelated mutations in two English litters nine years apart.

CFA records that the Cornish Rex began in Cornwall in 1950, when a curly-coated cream male kitten named Kallibunker turned up in a litter of barn cats. In 1959 a curly-haired male kitten was found in a litter in Devon. That kitten, Kirlee, “was considered to be another example of the Cornish Rex mutation,” CFA writes, but “test breedings proved this theory to be completely incorrect.” Those test breedings are how breeders knew they were dealing with a second, separate curl.

The genetics have since been pinned down. Gandolfi and colleagues, reporting in PLoS ONE in 2013, found that the Cornish Rex carries a four base pair deletion in a gene called LPAR6. In their sample the mutation was “fixed in Cornish Rex, absent in all straight haired cats analyzed,” and present in only one other breed, the small German Rex population. The Devon Rex curl had been traced three years earlier. In Mammalian Genome in 2010, the same group reported a complex alteration in a keratin gene, KRT71, and found that every Devon Rex among roughly 200 genotyped cats was homozygous for it. The 2013 paper notes that breeding studies had already shown the two phenotypes are “non-allelic,” meaning the mutations sit in different places.

That history is useful in a practical way. Two different mutations produce two different coats, and the coats are the second thing you can read in a photograph.

How do the coats differ?

A cat’s coat normally has three kinds of hair. Gandolfi’s team describes them as long, straight guard hairs that form the top coat, with thinner awn hairs and fine down hairs forming the undercoat. Count which of those are present and you have the difference between the breeds.

Cornish Rex. CFA’s standard describes a coat that is “short, extremely soft, silky, and completely free of guard hairs,” lying in “a tight, uniform marcel wave” that runs “from the top of the head across the back, sides, and hips continuing to the tip of the tail.” The disqualification list includes “Any coarse or guard hairs.” The coat is worth 40 points out of 100 in the Cornish standard, more than any other part of the cat. Gandolfi’s paper adds that the Cornish lacks guard hairs and various awn hairs, which is why the coat lies so close to the body.

Devon Rex. CFA’s own coat descriptions put it this way: the Devon Rex gene “allows all three hairs (down, awn and guard) to be present.” The breed profile is more specific, saying Devons “have some guard hairs that are very sparse, short, and rexed,” which creates “a coat that has an open wave and varies in density, texture, and length.” The standard asks for a coat that is “soft, fine, full-bodied, and rexed,” with “a rippled wave effect” that “should be apparent when the coat is smoothed with one’s hand.” Some unevenness is expected: CFA notes the coat may be “somewhat fragile, leading to occasional bare or ‘sueded’ areas.”

In a photograph, the Cornish coat reads as regular corrugation, close and even like a marcel wave in hair. The Devon coat reads as looser, softer ripples that vary over the body and are most visible, CFA says, “where the coat is the longest, on the body and tail.”

What does the head show?

The head is where a photo is most reliable, because it does not change with grooming or the season.

Cornish Rex. CFA calls the head “comparatively small and egg shaped,” with a length “about one-third greater than the width.” The profile is “a curve comprised of two convex arcs,” ending in a “Roman nose” with “a high prominent bridge.” The muzzle narrows “slightly to a rounded end.” Seen from the side, a Cornish has a long, curved, aristocratic profile.

Devon Rex. CFA describes the head as a “modified wedge,” delineated from the front by “a narrowing series of three (3) distinct convex curves: outer edge of ear lobes, cheekbones, and whisker pads.” The face is “full-cheeked with pronounced cheekbones,” and in profile the nose has “a strongly marked stop.” The general description sums the look up as “large eyes, short muzzle, prominent cheekbones, and huge, low-set ears” creating “a characteristic elfin look.”

So the two heads are close to opposites. The Cornish is long and narrow with a high-bridged nose and no real stop. The Devon is short and wide with full cheeks and a definite dip at the nose.

What about the ears, body and legs?

Ears. This is the tell from the opening. The Devon’s ears are “very wide at the base, so that the outside base of ear extends beyond the line of the wedge.” The Cornish’s are “large and full from the base” but upright and high. In a head-on photo, a Devon looks like its ears are on the sides of its head; a Cornish looks like its ears are on top.

Body. CFA describes the Cornish body as “small to medium in size” with a back that is “naturally arched” and an underline that curves up to “a smallish (tucked up in appearance) waistline.” The legs are “very long and slender,” and “the Cornish Rex stands high on its legs.” Its look is a greyhound’s. The Devon is “hard and muscular, lithe, and of medium length,” broad in the chest, and its front legs, CFA notes, “are often held in a ‘bulldog’ stance.” CFA gives typical adult Devon weights of six to nine pounds, with males sometimes larger.

Whiskers. Both breeds can have curled whiskers that break. CFA says the Devon’s eyebrows and whiskers are “curly but fragile, and may break off, leaving only bent stubs,” and Gandolfi’s team notes that most Cornish Rex have “bent and twisted vibrissae.” Broken whiskers point at a rex coat in general, not at one breed.

Could my curly cat be neither?

It could, and it is worth saying plainly. A rex coat is rare but not exclusive to these two breeds; Gandolfi’s paper lists several other rexoid and hairless coat types that have been documented in domestic cats. A single cat with a wavy coat, no papers and a head that fits neither standard closely is most likely an unregistered domestic cat with unusual fur. The Devon standard itself penalizes “heads that are round, or have the appearance of a mixed breed,” which tells you how much of the breed lives in the head rather than the coat.

Ancestry is also a separate question from appearance. The CFA standards describe what a show cat should look like; only registration papers naming a cat’s parents establish that it is a Devon Rex or a Cornish Rex. If your cat came from a shelter as a “domestic shorthair,” the domestic shorthair page explains what that label does and does not mean.

The two photos that settle this pair are a straight-on shot of the face, which shows whether the ears sit low and wide or high and upright, and a side profile, which shows a Roman nose or a marked stop. Cat Identifier reads both and returns the breeds your cat most resembles as a percentage mix, describing visible likeness rather than ancestry. If big ears are the feature that started the question, cat breeds with big ears separates the breeds by ear shape, and the full method for any cat starts at what breed is my cat. The same head-first approach separates another confusing pair in Maine Coon or Siberian.

Sources