Mendel’s Mischief is a place where science, storytelling, and a little chaos collide. Whether you’re here for science, humor, or just to see what happens when a geneticist lets loose—welcome to the mischief.
Here, Mendel has his fun. And by “Mendel,” I mean both my cat and Mendel’s laws of inheritance. I have my fun, too—after all, Mendel isn’t the only one in the room. But as for your host—me—I’m שׁוֹשַׁנָּה (my nom de plume), Hebrew for “lily” or “rose” 🌹. For now, I prefer to let Mendel take the limelight. Mischief suits him.
The first bit of mischief you’ve noticed is why the domain name and icon say variations of YodaMendel. Well, let’s get to it. Mendel needed a companion, so I got him a brother—or, as we call him, zayn bruder, his little half-brother, Yoda.
Yoda is Mendel’s sidekick, his co-conspirator in all things chaotic. They share about a quarter of their genetics—same father, different mother—but 100% of their antics and 100% of their signature mutations: defects in KRT71, the keratin gene responsible for their famously short, curly coats and whimsically truncated whiskers. Where Mendel is calculated, Yoda is impulsive. Where Mendel strategizes, Yoda leaps first and questions physics later—often from my back, which they use as a springboard. Drawers and doors are mere puzzles to be solved, and solve them they do, prying them open with unsettling skill. Together, they make up the purrfect pair: a nature vs. nurture experiment played out in fur, purrs, and gravity-defying zoomies.
Mendel, of course, takes his name from Gregor Mendel, the monk with the pea plants who uncovered the laws of inheritance—the very principles that shaped my cats, quirks and all. But if Mendel explained how traits are passed down, Darwin told the deeper story: how they change. Enter Yoda, and with him, more mischief—not so much named for his Jedi counterpart (though as a kitten, the resemblance was uncanny), but for the wisdom in evolution. That is, if one can call an impersonal process like evolution “wise” without indulging in a bit of anthropomorphic mischief of one’s own.
Now, about that mutation—because what is a Devon Rex if not a happy little accident, nature’s way of playing mad scientist? The story of Mendel and Yoda begins, like all good mutation stories, with an unassuming dam and feral tom in Devonshire, England—each unknowingly carrying the same genetic quirk. When these two ragamuffins paired up, their combined genetic lottery delivered one oddball in the litter. Somewhere in the ancestral shuffle, a typo had slipped into both of their KRT71 genes—a delightful little error that, when inherited from both parents, crimped their puffball’s fur, clipped his whiskers, and set in motion an entire breed of mischievous gremlins disguised as house cats.
Mutation is, at its core, evolution’s version of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Most of it falls flat—silent mutations, lethal mutations, the sort that turn an otherwise promising organism into an evolutionary dead end. But every once in a while, something marvelous happens. A misplaced nucleotide here, a copy-paste error there, and suddenly you have a cat with a perm, the boundless energy of a caffeinated ferret, and a personality that suggests they’re at least 30% elfin prankster.
The Devon Rex was never meant to be. And yet, there he was—strutting his serendipitous mutations across post-war England. Fortunately for both cat and kind, a sharp-eyed human with an appreciation for feline peculiarity took notice. Otherwise, evolution might not have been so forgiving.
There I go again, anthropomorphizing biology! But truly, a Devon Rex wouldn’t last long in the wild. Stripped of a proper outer coat, they’d shiver at the first hint of a stiff breeze, and with whiskers like clipped antennae, they’d miscalculate leaps with comical, if not catastrophic, consequences. And yet, here we are—decades later, my living room held hostage by two curly-haired mutational marvels, equal parts purring lap warmer and chaos engine.
Let me tell you more about these quirky pixies that have commandeered my table and conquered my back. The boys are six months apart—Mendel debuted on March 4, 2023, and Yoda crash-landed on September 22, 2023. When Yoda arrived, he was pink. Not “aww, a rosy glow” pink—fully, unapologetically pink, like a newborn rodent, a plucked parrot, or a Fraggle Rock muppet that lost a bet. Luckily, fur happened. Eventually.
Had he stayed pink, I’d have had to bathe him. And we all know what happens when you bathe a cat—government agencies get involved, neighbors hear the screams, and you end up questioning your life choices while dodging airborne claws… to say nothing of those Yoda eyes pleading with you like you’ve personally doomed him to a life of unspeakable torment. But lucky for us both, his wavy locks came in, and his dignity remains intact.
Now that you’ve seen them, you know what I mean about their fur—like a cross between a velvet painting and a scruffy otter pup. But calling them Devon Rexes might give the impression that their KRT71 mutation is the whole story. It’s not. Like all cats, they’re a delightful genetic cocktail, a tapestry of feline lineages stitched together by time, wanderlust (sometimes aboard Viking ships), and the occasional scandalous alley romance. In other words, they’re mutts—just fancy, curly-haired ones, despite the hefty price tag breeders charge to keep their distinguished looks in the family.
Getting them genotyped wasn’t optional—it was an inevitability, a scientific itch that had to be scratched. While I didn’t need a DNA test to confirm their curls, the results simply put data behind the obvious:
Gene → KRT71
Mutation → TCC..>ATC..
Copies → 2
Trait → Devon Rex coat
But what fascinated me most was Yoda’s Ragdoll ancestry. While he’s firmly established his right to self-determination (dodging an onslaught of motherly kisses with the exasperation of a beleaguered teen who just got hugged in front of his friends), he still has that signature Ragdoll trait—going limp when picked up, like a feline trust fall. Mendel, meanwhile, stands firm like a pint-sized dictator, unleashing a meow that bellows, “Lift me? I’d sooner rally the troops—unhand me, you lowly knave!”
Mendel’s Ancestry
Western (25.44%) → Broadly Western (10.61%), American Shorthair (9.56%), Maine Coon (3.33%), Norwegian Forest Cat (1.94%)
Eastern (34.01%) → Burmese (12.04%), Oriental (9.65%), Broadly Eastern (7.45%), Peterbald (4.87%)
Persian (10.57%) → Himalayan (5.2%), British Shorthair (4.83%), Broadly Persian (0.54%)
Exotic (0.95%) → Bengal (0.95%)
Polycat1 (29.03%) → Domestic Polycat
Yoda’s Ancestry
Western (40.98%) → Broadly Western (12.08%), Ragdoll (9.66%), Siberian (9.39%), Maine Coon (6.63%), American Shorthair (3.21%)
Eastern (11.56%) → Oriental (6.53%), Broadly Eastern (3.89%), Burmese (1.14%)
Persian (13.75%) → British Shorthair (4.78%), Broadly Persian (2.79%), Exotic Shorthair (2.52%), Persian (2.26%), Himalayan (1.38%)
Exotic (1.36%) → Bengal (1.36%)
Polycat (32.35%) → Domestic Polycat
And so, on that note, with their genetics laid bare, I like to think Mendel (the monk) would reach for his notebook while Darwin nods approvingly at the little mixed mutants streaking across my living room—and at all we still have to learn from them. Perhaps both would agree: mutations have never been so entertaining.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the mischief—and if so, there’s more to explore. Happy reading!
- NB: The “polycat” designation is its own mischief. It’s the feline genetics equivalent of “anyone’s guess”—centuries of intermingling making specific ancestries difficult to distinguish. It’s a bit like “recent admixture” in human genetics, where populations have blended—only cats, with help from their human staff, have taken it to an entirely new level. ↩︎