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A picture would help. I'm not quite sure that I know what you mean by "crimped" (I think I know but I've never seen it in a cat's whisker, so just to be sure...)
When we first got our cat (we adopted him full-grown from the Humane Society), I thought he had scorched eyebrows, because the very end of each eyebrow hair was just as twisty as a corkscrew. I was muttering anathemas to myself upon the person who was thoughtless enough to let a cat get near a candle, in fact.
Then after a few months, I noticed a new eyebrow hair emerging (they kind of stand out on him, because he's got white eyebrows on a black forehead), and lo and behold, that brand-new eyebrow hair had the same twisty end that all the other ones did. And I knew he hadn't gotten anywhere near a candle while he was living with us.
He's been with us now for three years, and his eyebrows always have twisty corkscrew-shaped ends. I can only assume that there is something about the way the hair follicles generate a new hair that causes the end of it to emerge curly. I seem to recall reading somewhere that in humans, the shaft of a straight hair is round or cylindrical while the shaft of a curly hair is flat, allowing it to curl up, and I wonder if somehow the first centimeter or so of each eyebrow hair comes out flat rather than round. I suspect your kitty has a similar quirk with his or her whiskers.
Whatever the reason, it's one of the quirks I love about our fur-kid, so I just grin whenever I see his curly-ended eyebrows.
Crimped whiskers are a trait of the American Wirehair, and also some of the Rex cats. Likely your cat just has a bit of crimpy ancestry I have 4 sibling cats, 1 is dead straight hair, the other 3 have varying degrees of crimpiness throughout their coats and whiskers, with the tiniest girl being crimpy from head to toe! Nothing to worry about.
My Mak has one whisker on the left side that is "wavy" I call it the evil whisker LOL One day it will fall out and I will be sad. I wonder if the new one will grow back wavy or straight.
My aunt has a black cat with all black whiskers except for one white one over his right eyebrow. They call that the "lucky eyebrow". Every time he loses it, it always grows back in white
My kitty has one of that when she first started out with us.
I don't think it is anything "damaging" to the cat...
Hers kinda straighten out after 6 months with us... we dunno how she got that one crimpled whiskers nor how that crimpled whiskers went away.
hello - I too have a kitten that has crinkled/crimped whiskers. I adopted him on the 20th of September from an animal rescue. He is only about 4-5 weeks old. He has fluffy kitten fur that feels thick and perhaps some underfur that is crinkled - he is not smooth and slick as my other older short hair cats.
On a side note:
I had two sibling cats and one always seemed to have broken and frayed whiskers - it looked really bad and I did not know what she was doing to keep breaking them. One day I witnessed her sister groom her, and she was chewing on her whiskers!!!!
Mystery Solved
Just a bit of texture - like curly hair. But most likely there is a bit of a rex gene somewhere in the genetic make up
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Crimped whiskers
