Don Sphinxes are pretty strong and muscular cats with wrinkled velvet skin. They are lively and graceful, clever and kind creatures. Don Sphinxes are the only hairless cats with hairlessness as a dominant gene. A Canadian Sphinx used to be the only registered hairless cat until recently. Hairless cats were first found in Russia in 1987 in Rostov-na-Donu. It all started with the cat Varya who was found in the street and taken home by Helen Konovalova. Cat "baldness" was mistakenly taken for a disease, but hairlessness proved to be stable and inherited. Irina Nemykina, a cat breeder and cattery owner (Myth) kept the cats and turned them into a breed. The originator of the breed is cat Chita. The following ten years of breeding in Rostov-na-Donu, Moscow and St. Petersburg resulted in a full-scale cat breed, enjoying popularity in Russia and Europe alike.

The standard for the breed was established by Russian experts on aboriginal breeds of cats on December, 3, 1994. In 1996 Don Sphinxes were registered in the World Federation of Cats.