German Rex Care Calendar: Coat, Weight, and Cold

German Rex care is thermostat management with a two-minute grooming job attached. The coat has no guard hairs and only a thin undercoat, so it barely mats and should almost never be shampooed, and for the same reason a 3-5 kg cat loses heat fast on a cold floor. The year runs on three numbers: the scale, the room thermometer, one heart ultrasound.

The year at a glance

Period	Coat and skin	Weight, health, room
January-February	Rubber glove weekly, 2-3 minutes; check ear tips for dryness	Monthly weigh-in; room at 20-23 C; heated bed in use
March-April	Twice weekly through the spring moult; ears weekly	Book the annual check and echo; watch the post-neuter gain
May-June	Weekly; bathe only if the tail base feels tacky	Shade half the perch; count resting breaths monthly
July-August	Weekly; check pale noses for redness after sunbathing	Room under 26 C; more wet food; water refreshed twice daily
September-October	Twice weekly for the autumn moult; nails every 3 weeks	Autumn weigh-in; repeat echo if the first was abnormal
November-December	Weekly; no shaving at any point	Draught-proof the bed corner; year-end weight and vaccine dates

Coat: weekly, brief, rarely wet

Once a week, two or three minutes with a rubber glove or a chamois clears the loose hair and keeps the curl sitting evenly. Only the two moults, March to April and September to October, need twice a week.

Shampoo is where owners go wrong. The coat dries in 30-60 minutes, but every wash strips the little sebum there is and the skin answers with more oil, so two or three baths a year, when the tail base is tacky or the cat is genuinely dirty, is the usual advice. Water at 36-38 C, cat shampoo, and a warm room for the drying hour. Never shave: the coat insulates against heat as well as cold, and bare pale skin burns.

Seborrhoea appears first behind the ears and along the spine as brown greasy flakes. Greasy again within 48 hours of a bath is a yeast question for the vet, not a second bath. The method is in how to brush a cat.

Weight: the number that moves first

Adults are 3-5 kg, with females at 3-4 kg and males up to 5 kg. Weigh monthly before the first meal and write it down: 200 g over two months is invisible on a curly coat and obvious in a column of figures. Ribs should feel easy under a flat palm, with a waist visible from above.

Appetite survives neutering; demand falls by about a fifth, which is how a 4 kg cat becomes 5.2 kg inside a year. Feed 45-60 g of dry or 115-140 g (4-5 oz) of wet a day in two meals, keep at least half of it wet because this breed drinks little, and hold treats under 20 kcal.

The ultrasound in the calendar

HCM is reported across the rex breeds and no breed-wide scheme exists, so the plan has to be individual: a baseline echocardiogram at 12 months, then every 12-18 months, dropping to 6 months once a murmur or a thickened wall appears.

Ask for both parents' echo reports from the past year, because a clear DNA panel explains only part of the disease. Count sleeping breaths: under 30 a minute is normal, a persistent 35-40 means book within days, and open-mouth breathing or blue gums is an emergency.

Every living German Rex descends from one Berlin cat found in 1947. Ask about litter size, kitten losses and any outcross rather than accepting "rare breed" as the reason for a litter of one.

Skin, ears, and sun

Pale ears and noses have little pigment and little hair. Window glass blocks UVB but not UVA, so a cat sleeping against a south-facing window in July can burn indoors. Sunbathing belongs before 11:00 or after 16:00, with a shaded half always available on the perch. A burned ear tip is red and tender, then crusts; a scab unhealed after 3 weeks needs a vet, since repeated sun damage on pale skin is a recognised cancer risk.

Wipe the visible ear folds weekly with cleaner on gauze, never a cotton bud in the canal. Brown wax plus head shaking for more than 2 days means an otitis check.

Cold, heat, and the room

Keep the living area at 20-23 C, the bed off tiled floors and away from balcony doors, and offer a heat mat at 35-38 C or a covered bed with wool. Below 18 C the cat starts sitting against radiators, which is the first sign. Shivering, cool ears and a tight curl justify a rectal temperature, and under 37.5 C is a vet call.

Above 26 C the thin coat stops helping: curtains at midday, a fan that does not blow on the cat, a cool tile. Open-mouth panting is an emergency at any temperature.

Food, play, and the day

Kittens eat four meals to 4 months, three to 6, two after that, and stay on kitten food to 12 months. Adults get two measured meals plus one puzzle feeder. Two 10-minute wand sessions, morning and evening, and a post at least 1.2 m tall; without them a bored cat invents games with bottle caps at 3 a.m. Nails every 3 weeks, as in nail trimming.

Mistakes that cost the most

• Bathing monthly because the coat "looks greasy"; each bath makes the next one necessary.
• Shaving in summer, which removes the insulation and exposes pale skin to UV.
• Free-feeding dry food after neutering, when appetite outlasts demand.
• Skipping the 12-month echo because the cat is small and seems fine.
• Using a fine metal comb on curls, which scrapes skin under a thin coat.
• Treating a shivering cat with a blanket instead of a thermometer.

When to call the vet the same day

Resting breaths above 40, any open-mouth breathing, blue or white gums, or hind legs that give way: emergency. Temperature under 37.5 C or over 39.5 C, 24 hours without food, straining with nothing produced, an ear scab unhealed at 3 weeks, or a cat that hides and stops grooming: same-day appointment.

Four things for this month: a baby scale with a note on the fridge, a thermometer in the bedroom the cat uses, an echocardiogram booked for the 12-month mark, and a rubber glove beside the food bin so the weekly two minutes actually happen.

Frequently asked