Scammers are shaving regular kittens and selling them as £500 hairless Sphynx cats

This is a Sphynx Cat:

Picture: Vyacheslav Oseledko/Getty

The cat is known for its hairlessness, and a full breed can set you back more than £400.

A new scam, involving shaving regular breed kittens, plucking out their whiskers and selling them for the same price has emerged.

In Canada’s province of Alberta, a number of women have been scammed out of hundreds of pounds after purchasing what they assumed was a Sphynx kitten, only to find out weeks later to the contrary – when the baby feline grew hair.

JoAnne Dyke bought a kitten, who she named Vlad, after seeing an ad posted online.

It looked like a sphynx because he was very, very skinny and his face was really angular.

It wasn't until after she collected the kitten and took it home that she found what appeared to be razor-blade marks along his tail, which a vet later said had become infected and could have led to an amputation.

The kitten had initially been withdrawn and frightened, and Dyke called what they did to him nothing short of animal abuse.

Regular sphynx kittens would want to be held and would want to be warm and touched, but he didn't want anything to do with us. He probably didn't want to be touched because his hair — it wasn't supposed to not be there.

Although she contacted the Alberta Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, they told her that they could do nothing since the trauma had past.

Vlad has since recovered, but the people responsible for the scam are still at large.

Dyke wasn’t the only one to have been duped: Alberta residents Shayla Bastarache and Holly Rattray had similar experiences.

HT CBCNews

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