Siamese
cat
history,
in
detail, is set out on this page using many sources
and some patience. You'll need patience to read it all too as
it is quite long! But then it is meant to be as definitive as
I
can make
it. But please note that these are my carefully considered views. I
don't pursue the
well worn conventional path. I just look, read and form my own views.
 What
did the original Siamese cat look like? Today in 2010 there is a
range of Siamese cat
body types,
from the slender ("oriental") Modern
Siamese to the Applehead
(Traditional) Siamese with a more cobby body. In the middle
there is a
new breed called the Thai,
which I call the classic Siamese. Breeders
of each say theirs is the true, the original Siamese cat. Who is
correct? Lets just add that the "original Siamese" is the cat that was
roaming around Siam (Thailand) as a household pet before the cat fancy
was a twinkle in the eye of Harrison Weir!
Taking
a purely commonsense
view it was bound to have been something like modern day slightly rangy
feral or
semi-domestic cats found in warmer climes in terms of body shape and
overall appearance but a
pointed cat...much more on that to follow. Another quick point:
was
the coat of the original Siamese cat less contrasty. Was the body
colour less white? See photo adjacent. I don't know. This article is
about body shape.
Although
I go
back to
the very beginning further on in this article, here is an extract
from the
Penny Illustrated a newspaper dated 30th
October 1897, which is
relevant to Siamese cat history.
This was the time of one of the first
Crystal Palace Cat Shows. The Crystal Palace was an
impressive
exhibition hall in London, England - it was burnt down. The writer says
this about the show
- this is taken verbatim as you can immediately tell by the language
used:
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Siamese
Cat History-
Drawing of a
Siamese
cat
1897 by Louis Wain (believed)
see copyright on this
image.
"I
went to the
Palace Cat Show to get a note for my readers, and saw the "whole
silvers," the "white smokes," the Iceland cats, and the most popular of
all the
Siamese, with their
mauve-blue eyes and kinky tails. Here
is Grave, innocent, and dignified as the animal depicted appears to be,
he is none of your tame garden wall sort, and he can show any amount
of sprightly gambol and frisk when opportunity offers."
As
is clear from the illustration accompanying the above text, the Siamese
cat was the Traditional Siamese cat as we now know it or, in my view,
under TICA
registration approximating the "Thai" cat breed (although the Thai
is more slender). It was an exotic
cat in 1897. The Siamese was also considered rare
at the time of
the early years of the cat fancy, late 1800s. Of course, the
interesting
thing is that the Siamese is still popular and it is still the
traditional Siamese cat that is the more popular. In other
words, the same
cat breed is
still
one of the most popular. I can say this with some authority (but not
admittedly with complete certainty) because the polls carried out on
this website tell me that the Siamese is in the top
three most popular cat breeds
(scroll down) and the Traditional
Siamese is
by far the most
popular out of the Traditional and Modern
Siamese.
(on these
linked pages you will see a voting form and results, below).
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Siamese
Cat History
Litter of Siamese Cats
dated about 1903.
copyright
In
another extract from this newspaper dated 10th March 1894, the author
states that ...."Siamese
cats,
the latter variety being the rarest variety of all....."
The
Siamese is no longer rare but almost ubiquitous. This doesn't make
this
breed any the poorer. You can see which cat breeds are rare, in my
opinion
and on my reckoning, at the time of the
writing of this article (2008) by clicking
on this link.
At
the beginning of the cat fancy the National Cat Club was the premier
cat fancy organization. It had the role that the GCCF in the UK has at
present. In fact, the National Cat Club was the Governing
Body of the Cat
Fancy but the
Governing
body seems to have split away in 1910. The first show they organized at
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Siamese
Cat History
King
of Siam 1853-1910
the Crystal Palace was in
1887, when 323 cat were entered. This was only three years after the
importation of the first Siamese cat into the UK in 1884; the beginning
of Siamese cat history in the West it is said. But there is evidence to
suggest that a fine specimen of a Siameese cat called "Siam" was
shipped in a Wells Fargo crate to the United States by David B.
Sickels, a United States diplomat at the consulate in Bangkok to the
First Lady Lucy Hayes in 1878! The cat died about a year later. Not an
auspicious start.
There appears
to have been a cat show at the Crystal Palace in fact in 1885 only one
year after the importation of the Siamese from Siam, when
the
offspring
of the sister to the cat referred to below (the gift from the King)
were shown.
The
importation from Siam to England happened when
the King
of Siam
gave the departing British Consular General (returning
to England) a Siamese cat as a present. I presume that he returned by
ship and it must have been quite a difficult journey for that cat.
Note: I have a slightly different story about this which I refer to
when writing about the Siamese cat's kinked tail.
The
King of Siam who gave this gift is illustrated left. He was by all
accounts a good King. The Monarchy in Thailand (formerly Siam) is still
going strong. To this day, it is a criminal offence in Thailand to
criticize or fail to
respect the Monarchy of Thailand. Punishment can be severe.
Mr.
Harrison Weir
founded the National Cat Club 1887 and set up the first formal cat show in 1871. He described the Siamese cat as the "Royal Cat of Siam" in his book Our Cats and all about them. He
said that the Siamese was "widely
different from other short-haired varieties".
In 2008, that
cannot be
said to be the case. But it does re-inforce the view that
at the
time this was a rare and unusual cat breed, which of course it was
as it had only recently been seen three years earlier for the
first time in the West.
He
observed the Siamese cat (for the first time himself, perhaps) when he
visited Lady
Dorothy Nevill, at Dangstien, near Petersfield. For those not living in
the UK or who are uncertain, the term "Lady" signifies the wife of a
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Siamese
Cat History
Illustration
from The Book of Cats 1903.
The Siamese cat on the right
has a "normal"
conformation.
man who has been knighted by the Queen. A man who has been knighted can
use the prefix "Sir" before his name in the same way a medical doctor
uses the prefix "Dr" before his/her name. Usually they are fairly well
off financially.
He commented on the "extreme
shortness of their fur" and
the fact that
it was "not
so glossy as our ordinary common domestic cat".
Both these
comments
would not, it seems, be in line with current thinking and are a part of
Siamese cat history although it hints at the smooth single coat.
Although it
implies
that the Siamese cat had a coat that was noticeable shorter and closer
than he was used to. There are currently quite a few cats with coats
that are probably shorter and closer, such as the Havana
Brown and Oriental
Shorthair, both of which were
not a twinkle in the eye of any
cat breeder at that time.
He referred to the tail as "thin".
Mr Harrison Wier also wrote that
Lady
Nevill had said that the Siamese cats that belonged to her were
imported from Siam and "presented
by Sir R Herbert of the Colonial Office". He is
not the British
Consular
General referred to above, but there maybe a connection.
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Siamese
Cat History - Royal
Siamese cat 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica - Photo, R. C. Ryan - Dark due
to cold? Film processing? Notice relatively cobby
body.
Lady
Neville told him that all her Siamese cats died fairly quickly, some
within one year, of worms. She said that, "they permeated every part
of
their body". Veterinary
surgery was obviously more
primitive over
100 years ago as that kind of condition is curable today. There is a
wealth of information on the Messybeast website but little in the way
of conclusion on the early years of the importation of this breed of
cat. What clearly comes across is this:
There
were other Siamese cats imported from Siam at or about this time, for
example a cat called "Wankee" was imported from Hong Kong in 1895-96.
The
Siamese was said by English cat fanciers to be the cat that occupied
the palace at Bangkok and was not known as a domestic cat for
"ordinary"
people.
The
Siamese was considered delicate and intelligent.
There
was talk of two types of Siamese and this may be the origin of the
split between the Traditional and the Modern Siamese. This talk seems
to have been about both the Seal point and the Chocolate point, two
original colors of pointing and secondly differences in
the body shape (conformation).
A person called Mrs Robinson (possibly a
cat breeder of the time - early 1900s - or at least someone in the cat
fancy) said
that, "Of
the
royals there seem to be two
types in
England: the one - rather a small,
long-headed
cat,
with glossy, close lying coat and deep
blue eyes, and
with a decided tendency to darken with age - is generally the imported
cat or having imported parents; the other is a larger cat, with a
rounder head,
a much thicker, longer and less close-lying
coat, and the
eyes a paler blue (these cats do not darken as much or as soon as the
other type, and have generally been bred for several generations in
England." She is saying that
the imported cat is on the
face of it
more like the Modern Siamese of today and the one that is breed in
England is more like the traditional cat of today.
That is confusing and
probably incorrect it seems to me because all the pictures of the time
show the Siamese cat at that time as having, what I would call, a
balanced conformation. In any
event, when a person is describing a cat as "long-headed" they are
making that description relative to what he or she considers to be the
norm and the norm was probably a fairly round faced cat such as the
British Short hair, which at the time was largely a random bred or
mixed breed cat.
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Siamese
Cat History
Original Siamese cat of about 1911
Of
other sources of the time the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica is helpful
in researching Siamese cat history.
Although it is a little hard to be precise because the presentation of
the photographs of the 1911
Encyclopedia Britannica website (Love to Know) is vague; by deduction
the picture above right must, by my estimation, be the Royal Siamese
referred to in the Encyclopedia.
The 1911
Encyclopedia Britannica also refers to a characteristic of the Siamese
cat, the kinked tail. This has been breed out but can sometimes be
felt, the merest vestige remaining. The Encyclopedia
says
this, "..........showing
in greater or less degree a decided kink or bend near the
tip".........."These
kink-tailed or tailless cats are moreover smaller
in size than the ordinary short-tailed breeds...." The
Encyclopedia
then
goes on to describe the cat as follows. It describes the "Royal"
Siamese as one of the "Old
World domestic breeds". It
says that the
Siamese has an origin distinct from "ordinary"
European
breeds. The
evidence for this could be found in the pointed coloring (this must
have been unique of very rare at the time) and the unmistakable "cry"
(we know the Siamese has a "demanding" voice and is vocal). Once again
reference is
made to a kinked tail. The book says this is related to the kinked-tail
Malay cats, which have a voice similar to the Siamese. A kinked
tail under the CFA Breed Standard is grounds for disqualification in
competition, today (2010). Yet it was treasured as special in Siam!
This shows
the
arbitrariness of some of the decisions in respect of the breed
standard. Siam incidently
is now called Thailand.
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Siamese
Cat History
Drawing of Siamese Cat
from and old Siamese book,
the Smud Khoi of Cats.
photo
copyright Daphne Negus
Then,
most interestingly, this Encyclopedia
makes
reference to, "..the
head is rather long and pointed,
the body also elongated with relatively slender limbs, the coat glossy
and close, the eyes blue, and the general color some shade of cream or
pink
with the face, ears, feet, under-parts, and tail chocolate or
seal-brown." I
had thought that the
reference to a long a pointed head was an
indication that the Modern Siamese conformation of today, extremely
foreign
and
really quite skinny, was a reflection of the original Royal
Siamese cat. In other words the modern look was near the original look.
But I am convinced this is not the case. The head of the
Royal Siamese was simply longer than the average English cat of that
time, which was a little round like the British
Shorthair cat as mentioned
above. The pictures on this page are the cat being described. I think
that the difference between the Manx
face
and the Siamese face above
left illustrates what I am saying. Important
note:
this is not the conventional view, which is that the Modern Siamese
reflects the ancient Siamese. Nothing that I see or read supports this.
It seems to fly in the face of common sense too as mentioned earlier. Up until
now I have
been mentioning England almost exclusively. In 1890
apparently Siamese cats were imported into the USA from
Siam. Siamese Cat history began in earnest in the USA in the
early part of
the 20th
Century (early 1900s). I have also focused on the early years. Once the
cat fancy in
the USA got involved with the Siamese cat the appearance of this cat
gradually changed. This
developmental change also
happened to the Persian.
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Siamese
Cat History
Cat
Book Poems 1350-1765
photo copyright Daphne Negus (believed).
The cat
top right in this illustration
is a Siamese Cat I
presume.
In
and around the 1950s the appearance of the Siamese cat was as seen in
these photographs. The well known film, Bell
Book and Candle
starring Kim Novak and James Stewart also starred Pyewacket a
traditional seal point Siamese. The film was released in 1958. This was
the only type of Siamese cat at that time.
From about the 1960s onwards, Siamese cat history
took a turn and breeders developed this cat in the
direction of what they call a "foreign" type cat (see cat
body types). Maybe this was for
the simple reason that it is a foreign cat in terms of origin. Maybe
it was a gradual thing that crept up on cat breeders due to breed
standards that allow wide discretion and breeders preferred what they
considered a more exotic appearance (i.e. less normal and more
refined). Or perhaps they had decided (as I have not) that the thin
Modern Siamese cat is the original and correct appearance based on the
Cat-Book Poems of
1350-1765
(see right).
The author of the Moggies website (one of my favorites) says that
Siamese cats depicted in this book looked thin, like the Modern
Siamese. Of course thinness and cobbyness are subjective and relative
concepts, as already mentioned.
The
illustration on the right shows what I believe to be a Siamese cat
(top right). This cat has a normal body and appearance similar to the
other Siamese cats illustrated on this page. In the Cat-Book
Poems (writes Daphne
Negus) the Siamese cat
depicted is a seal point, the original color. Another old
book that
originates from Thailand, as it is
now called,
is the Smud Khoi of Cats dated 1868-1910). This book also has a picture
believed to be of a Siamese cat of normal body appearance (see above
left).
Siamese
cat
history - The Change to
Modern Siamese
As mentioned,
Siamese
cat history took a turn when the
appearance changed over the last 50 years to the
extent that the original "normal" conformation was so far removed from
the new
look that it was outlawed by the cat associations and cats of that type
could not be shown. What
prompted the cat
breeders and associations to decide to develop a
cat different to the one that they had inherited? The answer, I
believe,
is in an article written by Betty White from the 1987-88 CFA Yearbook.
She says that the National Siamese Cat Club was formed in 1946 as there
was a need for a Siamese Group within the CFA "body politic". She says
that the Siamese cats of the mid 1900s found in Thailand (that were
imported into America) were not the same type ("not the same animal")
that were protected by order of the King of Siam in the late 19th and
early 20th century. These imported cats were also only selected for
their pattern. I wonder how it was decided that the Siamese
cat
had changed in Siam? There is no written or illustrative data from that
period to support this argument. And the research presented on this
page concludes
differently. In addition, she says that the "specimens" from abroad
were "inferior" and had coarser bone, "short heads" and
paler eyes. The
reasons for a change are made starkly apparent.
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An engraving
from Popular Science 1890
She
goes on to say that a movement started in the 1940s, the purpose
of which was to "stress type". I presume that this means to make the
appearance more
outstanding as the word "type" means appearance.
Betty
White also says
that in the 1960s breeders paid attention to
"refining bone". I presume that this means breeding for the long boney
face
(equating to a refinement for cat fanciers) and the rangy body. In
1966, the breed
standard was updated and revised (to cement the new look, I guess).
There were those within the CFA who no doubt disagreed with the
direction in which the breeding was going but were overridden.
Betty referes to Jeanne Singer who herself had referred to "great
improvement in head type" during the ten previous years (i.e.
1956-1966). The authors of Robinson's Genetics for Cat Breeders and
Veterinarians, say that the Modern Siamese is a fine example of cat
breeding and a prime example of the foreign or oriental "type". The
authors are 3 cat breeders and one veterinarian. That then is the story
of the change in appearance. To
summarise: the people at the CFA decided a more elegant (to their eyes)
appearance was
required than the "normal" one.
This naturally leads
on to the question of the business of cat
breeding. There is an uneasy relationship between breeding cats and
business, but it is a business, bottom line. Bearing in mind the
results of the survey on this site in relation to preferences on the
Traditional or Modern Siamese (see current result below), it would seem
that the cat fancy or the relevant breed council did little in the way
of market research before changing the appearance of the Siamese cat.
If they had they wouldn't have done it - if they really were concerned
about the business aspect of breeding.
The truth is that the cat fancy is a bit of a club, they do it for
themselves. When you go to a cat show you feel that you are an invited
guest to a private club, not a public exhibition. The Siamese Cat
History bears out this suggestion. Synchronize
this history with Balinese Cat history.
One final point. Common sense dictates that the two cat breeds, the
Modern and the Traditional are not so well defined as to exclude every
cat type in between. There are a range of cat shapes and appearances in
between the Modern and Traditional. These cats are sometimes referred
to as the Classic Siamese cat (particularly if they are at the
Traditional end of the spectrum). These will usually be seen as
non-purebred Siamese cats; fine cats nonetheless. And in my opinion the
Classic Siamese cat is the Thai cat. Some Thai cat breeders will
strongly disagree but to all intents and purposes it is one and the
same cat.
Siamese
cat
history -
The Backlash
That
created a
backlash and TICA have seen sense and registered the
Traditional Siamese as a new breed called the
"Thai". Thai
cats,
recognized by TICA and which can be seen on the Siamese
cat breeders
page and the Thai
cats (new window)
page are in fact Classic
Siamese cats, perhaps in
between the Modern and Traditional Siamese cats but very much at the
Traditional end of the scale.
Their
breed
standard is enlightening and welcome to supporters of the Traditional
Siamese. It refers to the indigenous Siamese cats, well balanced and
not extreme. It is nice to see a person within a major cat
association who has written a breed standard supporting the
view
that the Traditional Siamese cat is the way the Siamese cat should look
or originally looked. See a fanastic Flame
Point Siamese Cat. Siamese
cat
history would not be complete without showing the before and after
appearances of this cat breed:-
Siamese
cat
history -
The Public's Opinion
Siamese
Cat Hisory as I have mentioned on another page is bound up with
the development of this cat breed. My view, as you have guessed, is
that
the Traditional or more accurately, the
original, Siamese should have been left alone. What is
your view? Opinion
is still divided and polarised. Now you can vote your preference.
Make it genuine, of course, as I
would
like the vote to truly reflect public opinion.
This is the result so far (this is a manually updated spreadsheet):
You can also see this spreadsheet on this webpage: Siamese
cat vote
Siamese
Cat History - Copyright:
My understanding of copyright in respect of images comes from
Wikipedia.
In relation to images used by them they say that copyright for images
is for the life of the author plus 70 years for USA, Europe and Canada.
Louis Wain died in 1939 so on the face of it at 2008 he or his heirs
retain copyright (just). But it seems that he did not retain it at the
time the artwork was produced. I don't know who did or under what
terms. Another point, this is not a commercial site; it is for
educational and non-profit making purposes.
It is my carefully
considered opinion that if in reproducing images on this page I have
potentially infringed copyright (highly unlikely), I have a defense of
"fair use". The 1911
Encyclopedia
Britannica is copyright free. If someone
disagrees please contact me. You can see my details on
this page. Where the copyright issues are clear a
notice is provided under the photograph. There are 2 photographs of old
books by Daphne Negus. I have tried to contact her without success but
provided a notice under the photo nonetheless.
As to the text quoted this is out of copyright due to lapse of time.
Siamese
Cat
History - Sources:
- http://www.nationalcatclub.co.uk/History_frame.htm
- http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/
- http://www.messybeast.com/retro-photo.htm
- http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Cat
- http://www.cfa.org/breeds/profiles/siamese.html
- http://www.moggies.co.uk/
- http://www.koratworld.com/smudkoi.html
- http://www.siamesebc.org/yearbookArticles/yearbook87.html
- http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/manunews/paper_trail_display.asp?nid=65&subj=manunews
Siamese
Cat
History to Home Page
The
text about Siamese cat history on this page is copyright ©
Michael @ Pictures of Cats
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