The Truth About Mr. Bigglesworth (Austin Powers)
I want chicken I want liver Meow Mix Meow Mix please deliver
Contains spoilers for Austin Powers although spoilers weren’t a thing in 1997
Another Persian this time! Well for part of the movie at least. Mr. Bigglesworth is Dr. Evil’s cat in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. He is a send-up of Blofeld’s cat in the James Bond films which I know about despite not having watched them (except GoldenEye and that one where Daniel Craig comes out the sea). Mr. Bigglesworth starts the movie as a fluffy white Persian who is very upset (although he actually looks pretty happy). Unfortunately, when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset, people DIE. Shortly after Mr. Bigglesworth inadvertently causes several deaths because Dr. Evil didn’t spend six years at evil veterinary school, they leave Earth in a rocket ship and get cryogenically frozen. Thirty years later they return to blackmail the world for ONE MILLION DOLLARS (imagine that there’s a GIF here). Sadly, because of “feline complications to the reanimation process” Mr. Bigglesworth is now completely hairless (another death ensues).
I’m not here to talk about the science of cryogenic freezing because that’s too complicated. But we can still think about the reality of this situation by answering a few questions.
Question 1: Could a cat lose all their fur?
Plenty of issues can cause loss of fur (alopecia) in cats, which can be split into medical reasons and overgrooming. Also some medical conditions cause overgrooming because dermatology is complicated. Examples include infections (bacterial, yeast, ringworm), hormonal disease (hyperthyroidism) allergies (to food or to anything really), parasites, pain and stress. So just a few things to think about. However, the resulting fur loss tends to be patchy and is often confined to certain parts of the cat, depending on the underlying issue.
Even so-called bald cats like Sphynxes aren’t completely hairless, although the amount varies from cat to cat. Some have downy fur all over their body (peach fuzz) and some have some fur just on their nose, tail and feet. I should also add that Sphynxes are bald because of a genetic mutation in the KRT71 gene so that I sound clever.
Question 2: Can cryogenic freezing lead to fur loss
I know that technically the fur loss came from the reanimation process not the freezing itself, but since reanimation isn’t actually a thing, we have to look at the impact of cryogenics instead.
This question has taken me into the weird world of hair removal, which is something I have previously only really thought about in the summer or when I get a particularly annoying chin hair. Cold is indeed used in hair removal but is just a method to numb the pain from the multiple horrific ways we have chosen to keep up the pretence that hair doesn’t naturally grow on certain parts of our bodies. Interestingly, cryogenics appears to actually have potential for encouraging hair regrowth in certain types of human alopecia.
Technically, we can’t extrapolate this to cats since the loss of fur was from “feline complications”. Indeed, Austin Powers didn’t lose any hair (or chest hair) in his cryogenic chamber. However in real life, hair and fur is essentially the same thing.
3. Would a Persian cat look like a Sphynx if they lost their fur?
Mr. Bigglesworth is played initially by a Persian cat. Persians are flat faced (known as brachycephalic) cats with short noses. This can have impacts on their health that I’m not going to go into, but you can read more about it here. After unfreezing, Mr. Bigglesworth is played by a Sphynx cat (Ted Nude-gent apparently). Sphynx cats have longer faces (known as dolichocephalic). If you look at a photo side-by-side, the reanimation process must have lengthened the muzzle, elongated the nose, changed the shape of the ears and made the face less rounded. Eye colour seems to be blue in both though so at least they got that right.
Overall:
The fur would likely be patchy rather than completely gone.
Cryogenic freezing doesn’t work (yet).
If anything, cryogenic freezing might be more likely to grow hair/fur.
It’s a totally different cat.
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery Cat Facts score= 1 out of 10 cats for scientific accuracy (one additional point because Dr. Evil loves Mr. Bigglesworth and that makes me happy)
References:
Abdel Motaleb, A. A., & Sayed, D. S. (2020). Different freezing time of superficial liquid nitrogen cryotherapy in treatment of recalcitrant alopecia areata: randomized clinical trial. Dermatologic Therapy, 33(4): e13640.
Gandolfi B, Outerbridge CA, Beresford LG, Myers JA, Pimentel M, Alhaddad H, Grahn JC, Grahn RA, Lyons LA. (2010) The naked truth: Sphynx and Devon Rex cat breed mutations in KRT71. Mamm Genome. 21(9-10):509-15.