Registration and the Selkirk Story
The Selkirk Rex began with a curly shelter kitten in Montana and grew into a breed loved for its plush, unstructured curls and patient, cuddly temperament — in the longhair, those curls arrive as a glorious tousled coat over a heavy-boned, muscular body. Your kitten's core papers are registration documents or a registration application and a lineage naming both parents and their lines. Verify the documents match the kitten — birth date, sex, colour — and file registry correspondence with them from day one, rather than in an email folder you will search for in vain later.
A Curl Development Note
Selkirk kittens are not born with their adult coats: curls may be present at birth, loosen, and re-form as the kitten matures, with the full effect sometimes taking a couple of years to settle. Ask the breeder for a dated note on where your kitten's coat is in that journey, plus a photograph, and for the grooming routine used so far — how often the coat is combed, how mats behind the ears and under the legs are handled, and what the kitten tolerates happily. That page guides your first months and tells your vet what is developmental if the coat looks dramatically different at the next visit.
Vet Records and Handover Care
Look for dated examination notes, vaccinations administered, and worming or other parasite care, with weights where the breeder kept them. If a microchip is implanted, its number should be written clearly for you to register. Feeding guidance should name the current food, amounts, and rhythm, and litter notes should follow. Add any breeder observations about the individual kitten — the quiet one, the lap-seeker, the first to the food bowl — because a Selkirk's steadiness can hide small changes, and knowing the kitten's starting personality helps everyone notice a genuine shift later.
Contract and Promised Papers
The contract should identify the kitten and both parents, set out pet versus breeding terms, describe any health guarantee, and record what the breeder asks if your circumstances change. Where final registration papers are to be transferred after neutering or once registry processing completes, that arrangement and its timeframe belong in the signed document. Keep your polite follow-up emails in the same file; a complete paper trail is simply how careful owners close the loop, and good breeders expect it.
Parents and Screening to Request
Ask for the sire's and dam's registration details, ages, and any health screening records the breeder holds, and ask about coat outcomes in earlier litters — how the longhair curls matured, what grooming the adults genuinely need. Seeing the mother, ideally with her coat in its natural state, teaches you more about your kitten's future grooming workload than any breed description. Record what you are told during the visit in your own notes and file them with the lineage the same evening.
Growing a Coat — and a File — at Home
At your first vet visit, add the examination, agree the vaccination plan, and confirm the chip is in your name, then keep health records, coat notes, and lineage together as the kitten's coat transforms. Groomers, too, work better from that shared file. Held in KinsLe's Pet Passport, your Selkirk Rex Longhair's registration, curl diary, and clinic history remain one organised packet, ready to hand over whenever this cat changes hands or clinics.