The genesis of the Siamese
The sophisticated Siamese takes its name from its country of origin, the Kingdom of Siam, which corresponds to present-day Thailand. The oldest document mentioning it, the Tamra Maew, dates from 1350. It was found in Ayutthaya, which was the capital of the kingdom from 1350 to 1767. This work is a treatise on cats, in the form of poems accompanied by illustrations . Some of them show slender-bodied, pale-colored cats, sporting a darker mask on their face, ears, paws, and tail. At the time, they squinted and had knots on the tail, specificities that only became defects centuries later that breeders managed to eliminate.
Legend has it that these cats were neither more nor less than the keepers of the royal treasures, and watched them with such attention that they ended up squinting.
In Europe, it was in Great Britain, at the end of the 19th century, that the Siamese were first heard of. In 1871, two specimens were presented at the very first cat show in contemporary history, which was held at Crystal Palace in London. The event catalog indicated that they were the first to set foot in the country, which is very likely.
However, it was not they who were at the origin of the development of the breed in the country, but rather Pho and Mia, two individuals that Owen Gould, British Consul General, received in 1884 as a gift from the king. from Siam.
He brought them back to Great Britain and his sister, Lilian Jane Veley, took care of them. She literally fell in love with these magnificent felines and decided to present them at the 1885 edition of the Crystal Palace exhibition. They aroused great interest from the public. There are also a few photos dating from this time, which show that they were quite robust and had a round head. They were the first two specimens entered in the British Register of Siamese, a register kept by one of the cat owner clubs that had existed for several years and were the ancestors of the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy (GCCF), founded in 1910.
They died immediately after this exhibition, but had since given birth to a litter. Lilian Jane Veley continued to devote herself to these cats; with a view to developing the breed, in 1901 she even created the Siamese Cat Club, the first Siamese breed club in the world.
It must be said that between 1884 and the end of the 19th century, many Siamese were imported from Siam to Great Britain and entered in the British Register of Siamese. Indeed, the breed quickly gained popularity with the English aristocracy; by fad, many of its members wanted to own one. A standard was also drawn up in 1892, thus defining the physical attributes that a subject had to present in order to be admitted into the register.
The Siamese arrived in France in 1885, when a French diplomat brought two specimens from Bangkok to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. In 1893, Doctor Oustalet, professor at the Museum of Natural History, wrote about the cats of Siam brought back by President Carnot's daughter-in-law. He was careful to describe them precisely and wondered if this race descended from a wild species.
The introduction of the Siamese into the United States took place in 1879. The American consul in Bangkok, having heard of the love for cats felt by the wife of the then president, Rutherford Birchard Hayes, told him reach a Siamese whom she named Siam.
The breed really took off in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, much helped by the cats of Mrs. Clinton Locke. Founder in 1899 of the Beresford Cat Club, the first registry of purebred cats in the country, she bought a specimen in France, Lockehaven Siam, which in 1906 won in Detroit the prize for the best cat in America. She repeated this feat the following year in Chicago, this time with a female, Lockehaven Elsa. In 1909 a breed club was founded, the Siamese Cat Society of America, which notably published a first standard.
However, the rise of the breed was interrupted by World War I, both in the United States and in Europe.
The development of the Siamese in the United States also owes a lot to Virginia Cobb. Originally from Massachusetts, she fell in love with the breed during a cat show at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1928. She then decided to import a first specimen, which she named CH Oriental Nanki Pooh of Newton . This female lived 17 years and had many litters.
In addition to being very active and involved in the breeding and distribution of the Siamese in the United States, Virginia Cobb was also interested in its genetics. In collaboration with Clyde Edgar Keeler, geneticist at Harvard University, she explored in particular the scientific aspects of different coat colors. The earliest known color of the Siamese had been the seal point, with the tips dark brown and the rest of the coat cream. However, depending on the reproductions, blue point (dark blue tips and bluish white dress), chocolate point (chocolate tips, ivory dress) and lilac point (pinkish gray tips, white dress) appeared later.
The Second World War marked a second stopping time for the expansion of the breed, especially in Europe. At the end of hostilities, it was even close to extinction in Great Britain.
So new blood was needed to expand the gene pool and move forward. Again, many specimens were therefore imported from Thailand, either to Europe or to the United States.
However, as it had already been the case before the two world wars, the Siamese had difficulty adapting to local climates, very different from the tropical climate of his native Thailand. Whatever the country, the breeders faced high losses, caused mainly by gastroenteritis and parasitosis.
This did not prevent the breed from gaining popularity from the 1960s onwards, whether in Europe or the United States. Many breeders and show judges then began to favor a more slender appearance. The latter therefore began to evolve gradually, as the reproductions and selections progressed.
The Americans particularly favored a tubular and elegant body, as well as a long head. The English, for their part, gave priority to almond-shaped eyes, large ears and a little lower on the head. In addition to changing, the standards also began to differ from one country to another.
Nevertheless, all over the world, the Siamese grew longer, with thin bones and a narrow head. The work of the breeders also allowed to eliminate strabismus as well as the knots of the tail.
This path consisting in developing the morphology of the breed was the one chosen by a majority of breeders, from the beginning of the 70s. Others, few in number, decided to keep the traditional physical type of the Siamese. Over the decades, the gap thus widened between on the one hand a Siamese qualified as “Modern”, largely modeled by Man, and on the other a Siamese known as “Traditional”, corresponding to the physical type. original of the breed and known as Thai. In the early 2000s, the latter ended up being recognized as a distinct breed by most official bodies.
The Modern Siamese nevertheless largely stole the show, and enjoys much higher popularity. This explains, moreover, that he himself was at the origin of several other races:
the Balinese, who is none other than a modern long-haired Siamese;
theOriental, the result of crossing the Siamese with in particular Russian Blue, British Shorthair andAbyssinian ;
theHimalayan, produced by crossing the Siamese and the Persian ;
the Tonkinese, fruit of the marriage between the Siamese and the Burmese ;
Mandarin,junction between the Balinese andOriental SH;
theOcicat,created from the Siamese and theAbyssinian.
Recognition of Modern Siamese
With a history spanning several centuries, Modern Siamese began to be recognized by national and international official bodies from the 1930s.
The American Cat Fanciers' Association (CFA) was the first to recognize the breed in 1934. The British Governing Council of the Cat Fancy (GCCF) followed suit in 1936.
The Fédération Internationale Féline (FIFé), which brings together feline authorities from around forty countries, including Switzerland and Belgium, did the same in 1949. Ten years later, it also recognized theOriental Shorthair, before do the same in 1983 with the Balinese, then in 1985 with theOriental Longhair : these four races together constitute a group in its own right.
The Canadian Cat Association (AFC) recognized the Siamese in 1950, barely a year after the FIFé.
In 1979, the International Cat Association (TICA) in turn granted him recognition and placed him in a group which also included Balinese,Oriental Shorthair andOriental Longhair, who were admitted at the same time.
