I love Siamese

All Siamese have a creamy base coat with coloured points on their snouts, ears, paws and lower legs, tails and (in males) scrota. The pointed pattern is a form of partial albinism, resulting from a mutation in tyrosinase, an enzyme involved in melanin production. The mutated enzyme is heat-sensitive; it fails to work at normal body temperatures, but becomes active in cooler areas of the skin. This results in dark colouration in the coolest parts of the cat's body, including the extremities and the face, which is cooled by the passage of air through the sinuses. All Siamese kittens, although pure cream or white at birth, develop visible points in the first few months of life in colder parts of their body. By the time a kitten is four weeks old the points should be clearly distinguishable enough to recognise which colour they are. Siamese cats tend to darken with age, and generally adult Siamese living in warm climates have lighter coats than those in cool climates.

Originally the vast majority of Siamese had seal (extremely dark brown, almost black) points, but occasionally Siamese were born with blue (a cool grey) points, genetically a dilution of seal point; chocolate (lighter brown) points, a genetic variation of seal point; or lilac (pale warm gray) points, genetically a diluted chocolate.
today through selective breeding.

These colours were at first considered "inferior" seal points, and were not qualified for showing or breeding. Each of these shades were eventually accepted by the breed associations, and became more common through breeding programmes specifically aimed at producing these colours. Later, outcrosses with other breeds developed Siamese-mix cats with points in other cat colours and patterns including red point, lynx (tabby) point, and tortoise-shell ("tortie") point. In the United Kingdom, all pointed Siamese-style cats are considered to be part of the Siamese breed. In the United States, the major cat registry, the Cat Fanciers' Association, considers only the four original colourations as Siamese: seal point, blue point, chocolate point, and lilac point. Oriental cats with colourpoints in colours or patterns aside from these four are considered Colourpoint Shorthairs in the American cat fancy.

Siamese have almond-shaped, bright blue eyes and short, flat-lying coats. Many Siamese cats from Thailand had a kink in their tails but over the years this trait has been considered to be a flaw and breeders have largely eradicated it, although it persists among street cats in Thailand. Many early Siamese were cross-eyed to compensate for the abnormal uncrossed wiring of the optic chiasm, which is produced by the same albino allele that produces coloured points. Like the kinked tails, the crossed eyes have been seen as a fault and through selective breeding, the trait is far less common today.

Siamese are affectionate and intelligent cats, renowned for their social nature. They enjoy being with people and are sometimes described as "extroverts". They are extremely vocal, with a loud, low-pitched voice that has been compared to the cries of a human baby, and persistent in demanding attention. They also have a great need for human companionship. Often they bond strongly to a single person. These cats are typically active and playful, even as adults.

The social orientation of Siamese cats may be related to their lessened ability to live independently of humans. Siamese coat colouration is appealing to humans, but is ineffective for camouflage purposes. They are less active at night than most cats, possibly because their blue eyes lack a tapetum lucidum, a structure which amplifies dim light in the eyes of other cats. Like blue-eyed white cats, they may also have reduced hearing ability. Therefore, being dependent on humans may have been a survival trait for ancestors of the Siamese.

Siamese cats have existed for centuries in Thailand (formerly Siam). The pointed cat known in the West as "Siamese" is one of several breeds of cats from Siam described and illustrated in manuscripts called "Tamra Maew" (Cat Poems), estimated to have been written in the 1700s.

The breed was first seen outside their Asian home in 1884, when the British Counsul-General in Bangkok, Edward Blencowe Gould (1847-1916), brought a pair of the cats back to Britain for his sister, Lilian Jane Veley (who went on to be co-founder of the Siamese Cat Club in 1901). The cats were shown at the Crystal Palace in 1885, and the following year another pair (with kittens) were imported by a Mrs. Vyvyan and her sister. Compared to the British Shorthair and Persian cats that were familiar to most Britons, these Siamese imports were longer and less "cobby" in body, had heads that were less round with wedge-shaped muzzles and had larger ears. These differences and the pointed coat pattern which had not been seen before by Westerners, produced a strong impression--one early viewer described them as "an unnatural nightmare of a cat". But these striking cats also won some devoted fans and over the next several years fanciers imported a small number of cats, which together these formed the base breeding pool for the entire breed in Britain. It is believed that most Siamese in Britain today are descended from about eleven of these original imports. Several sources give Gould's brother Owen Nutcombe Gould (1857-1929) as the British Consul-General in Bangkok, but Owen was only 27 in 1884 and not known to be in Bangkok. In their early days in Britain they were called the "Royal Cat of Siam", reflecting reports that they had previously been kept only by Siamese royalty. Later research has not shown evidence of any organised royal breeding programme in Siam.

The original Siamese imports were, like their descendants in Thailand today, medium-sized, rather long-bodied, muscular, graceful cats with moderately wedge-shaped heads and ears that were comparatively large but in proportion to the size of the head. The cats ranged from rather substantial to rather slender but were not extreme in either way.

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* Bucky Katt from Get Fuzzy
* Genghis - Growltiger's enemy in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot
* D.C.(Darn Cat) from the original That Darn Cat! (1965 film)
* Jason - Seal-point on BBC TV's Blue Peter
* Kit, the "familiar spirit" of the main characters in Charmed
* Koko & Yum-Yum - from Lillian Jackson Braun's "The Cat Who..." novels
* Lalage, owned by the writer Anthony Burgess, taken by him to Malaya. After a long life she died in Kota Bharu, just across the border from Siam
* Misty Malarky Ying Yang, pet of Amy Carter
* Pyewacket, the witch's familiar in the film Bell, Book and Candle
* Tao, from Sheila Burnford's novel The Incredible Journey
* Sagwa in the children's book Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat by Amy Tan and animated TV series of the same name
* Shan Shein - White House cat owned by Gerald Ford's daughter, Susan
* Si and Am - the havoc-wreaking Siamese duo from Lady and the Tramp
* Syn, who played the title role of "D.C." in the 1965 Walt Disney film That Darn Cat!
* Solange from 9 Chickweed Lane
* Henry - from the children's book Cross Country Cat by Mary Calhoun
* Skippyjon Jones from the series of the same name

* Balinese - a longhaired Siamese. In the largest US registry, the Cat Fanciers Association (CFA), limited to the four traditional Siamese coat colours of seal point, blue point (a dilute of seal point), chocolate point and lilac point (a dilute of chocolate point). Other registries in the US and worldwide recognise a greater diversity of colours.
* Burmese is a breed of domesticated cats descended from a specific cat, 'Wong Mau', who was found in Burma in 1930 by Dr. Joseph G. Thompson. She was brought to San Francisco, California, where she was bred with Siamese. While technically not derived from Siamese, the breed was considered to be a form of Siamese for many years, leading to cross-breeding.
* Colourpoint Shorthair - a Siamese-type cat registered in CFA with pointed coat colours aside from the traditional CFA Siamese coat colours; originally developed by crosses with other shorthair cats. Considered to be part of the Siamese breed in all other cat associations, but considered a separate breed in CFA. Variations can include Lynx Points and Tortie Points.
* Himalayan - Long-haired breed originally derived from crosses of Persians to Siamese and pointed domestic longhair cats in order to introduce the point markings and the colours chocolate and lilac. After these initial crosses were used to introduce the colours, further breed development was performed by crossing these cats only to the Persian breed. In Europe they are referred to as colourpoint Persians. In CFA they are a colour division of the Persian breed.
* Javanese - a longhaired version of the Colourpoint Shorthair in CFA. In Europe, an obsolete term for the longhaired version of the Oriental Shorthair.
* Ocicat - a spotted cat originally produced by a cross between Siamese and Abyssinian.
* Oriental Shorthair - a Siamese-style cat in non-pointed coat patterns and colours, including solid, tabby, silver/smoke, and tortoise-shell.
* Oriental Longhair - a longhaired version of the Oriental Shorthair.
* Serengeti Cat - a spotted breed created to resemble the Serval, from Siamese, Oriental Shorthair, and Bengal crosses.
* Snowshoe - a cream and white breed with blue eyes and some points that was produced through the cross-breeding of the Siamese and bi-coloured American Shorthair in the 1960s.
* Tonkinese - a cross between a Siamese cat and a Burmese. The Tonkinese are "pointed" cats but their bodies are of a darker colour than the Siamese.

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