50-512: The Siamese cat ( Thai : แมวไทย, Maeo Thai ; แมวสยาม, Maeo Sayam) is one of the first distinctly recognised breeds of Asian cat. It derives from the Wichianmat landrace . The Siamese cat is one of several varieties of cats native to Thailand (known as Siam before 1939). The original Siamese became one of the most popular breeds in Europe and North America in the 19th century. Siamese cats have
100-402: A tapetum lucidum , a structure which amplifies dim light in the eyes of other cats. The mutation in the tyrosinase also results in abnormal neurological connections between the eye and the brain. The optic chiasm has abnormal uncrossed wiring; many early Siamese were cross-eyed to compensate, but like the kinked tails, the crossed eyes have been seen as a fault, and due to selective breeding
150-612: A dominant language in all aspects of society in Thailand, Thai initially saw gradual and later widespread adoption as a second language among the country's minority ethnic groups from the mid-late Ayutthaya period onward. Ethnic minorities today are predominantly bilingual, speaking Thai alongside their native language or dialect. Standard Thai is classified as one of the Chiang Saen languages—others being Northern Thai , Southern Thai and numerous smaller languages, which together with
200-422: A distinctive colourpoint coat, resulting from a temperature-sensitive type of albinism . Distinct features like blue almond-shaped eyes, a triangular head shape, large ears, an elongated, slender, and muscular body, and various forms of point colouration characterise the modern-style Siamese. The modern-style Siamese's point-colouration resembles the 'old-style" foundation stock . The "old-style" Siamese have
250-533: A four-way distinction among stops and affricates . The maximal four-way occurred in labials ( /p pʰ b ʔb/ ) and denti-alveolars ( /t tʰ d ʔd/ ); the three-way distinction among velars ( /k kʰ ɡ/ ) and palatals ( /tɕ tɕʰ dʑ/ ), with the glottalized member of each set apparently missing. The major change between old and modern Thai was due to voicing distinction losses and the concomitant tone split . This may have happened between about 1300 and 1600 CE, possibly occurring at different times in different parts of
300-520: A higher rate of morbidity . They are at higher risk of neoplastic and gastrointestinal problems but have a lower risk of feline lower urinary tract disease . A UK study of veterinary records found a life expectancy of 11.69 years for the Siamese compared with 11.74 years overall. The Siamese has been found to have a predisposition to progressive retinal atrophy . The same albino allele that produces coloured points means that Siamese cats' blue eyes lack
350-599: A long-haired variant called the Himalayan . The long-haired Siamese is recognised internationally as a Balinese cat . The breeding also created the hair-mutation breeds, including the Cornish Rex , Sphynx , Peterbald , and blue-point Siamese cat. A description and depiction of the Wichianmat (Siamese cat) first appears in a collection of ancient manuscripts called the Tamra Maew (The Cat-Book Poems), thought to originate from
400-613: A point, and a long, wedge-shaped head topped by extremely large, wide-set ears. By the mid-1980s, cats of the original style had largely disappeared from cat shows. Still, a few breeders, particularly in the UK, continued to breed and register them, resulting in today's two types of Siamese: the modern, "show-style", standardised Siamese, and the "Traditional Siamese", both descended from the same distant ancestors, but with few or no recent ancestors in common, and effectively forming distinct sub-breeds, with some pressure to separate them. In addition to
450-449: A round head and body. They have been re-established by multiple registries as the Thai cat . Siamese and Thai cats are selectively bred and pedigreed in multiple cat fancier and breeder organisations. The terms "Siamese" or "Thai" are used for cats from this specific breed, which are by definition all purebred cats with a known and formally registered ancestry . The ancestry registration
500-478: A single person. Myrna Milani describes the Siamese as being more diurnal, more likely to stay close to their owner, and less likely to hunt than other cats. Based on Swedish insurance data, which tracked cats only up to 12.5 years, Siamese and Siamese-derived breeds have a higher mortality rate than other breeds. 68% lived to 10 years or more and 42% to 12.5 years or more. The majority of deaths were caused by neoplasms , mainly mammary tumours . The Siamese also has
550-655: A strong impression. One early viewer described them as "an unnatural nightmare of a cat" . Over the next several years, fanciers imported a small number of cats, forming 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. In Britain, they were called the "Royal Cat of Siam." Some reports say that they had previously been kept only by Siamese royalty. Research does not show evidence of any organised royal breeding programme in Siam. In
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#1732901885643600-525: A syllable that formerly began with a voiceless consonant (including glottalized stops). An additional complication is that formerly voiceless unaspirated stops/affricates (original /p t k tɕ ʔb ʔd/ ) also caused original tone 1 to lower, but had no such effect on original tones 2 or 3. The above consonant mergers and tone splits account for the complex relationship between spelling and sound in modern Thai. Modern "low"-class consonants were voiced in Old Thai, and
650-500: Is based on the register of the educated classes by Central Thai and ethnic minorities in the area along the ring surrounding the Metropolis . In addition to Central Thai, Thailand is home to other related Tai languages . Although most linguists classify these dialects as related but distinct languages, native speakers often identify them as regional variants or dialects of the "same" Thai language, or as "different kinds of Thai". As
700-507: Is based on the dialect of the central Thai people, and it is written in the Thai script . Hlai languages Kam-Sui languages Kra languages Be language Northern Tai languages Central Tai languages Khamti language Tai Lue language Shan language others Northern Thai language Thai language Southern Thai language Tai Yo language Phuthai language Lao language (PDR Lao, Isan language ) Thai has undergone various historical sound changes. Some of
750-528: Is the cat's pedigree or "paperwork". The Siamese is a part of the foundation stock for crossbreeding with other cats. The crossbreeding resulted in many different types of cats, like the Oriental Shorthair and Colourpoint Shorthair . The Oriental Shorthair and Colourpoint Shorthair were developed to expand the range of coat patterns . The breeding of the Oriental and Colourpoint Shorthairs resulted in
800-479: Is the language of television, education, news reporting, and all forms of media. A recent research found that the speakers of the Northern Thai language (also known as Phasa Mueang or Kham Mueang) have become so few, as most people in northern Thailand now invariably speak Standard Thai, so that they are now using mostly Central Thai words and only seasoning their speech with the "Kham Mueang" accent. Standard Thai
850-712: The Ayutthaya Kingdom (1351 to 1767 AD). Over a dozen are now kept in the National Library of Thailand . The manuscripts have resurfaced outside of Thailand and are now in the British Library and National Library of Australia . At the end of the Burmese–Siamese war , the capitol was sacked on 7 April 1767. The Burmese army burned everything in sight and returned to Burma, taking Siamese noblemen and royal family members with them as captives. A Thai legend states that
900-528: The Colourpoint Shorthair as a distinct breed. Many Siamese cats from Thailand had a kink in their tails, but over the years, this trait has been considered a flaw. Breeders have largely eradicated it, but the kinked tail persists among street cats in Thailand. Siamese are usually very affectionate and intelligent cats, renowned for their social nature. Many enjoy being with people and are sometimes described as "extroverts". Often they bond strongly with
950-644: The GBL1 gene is responsible for the condition in the breed. Siamese cats have been protagonists in literature and film for adults and children since the 1930s. Clare Turlay Newberry 's Babette features a Siamese kitten escaping from a New York apartment in 1937. British publisher Michael Joseph recorded his relationship with his Siamese cat in Charles: The Story of a Friendship (1943). The "Siamese Cat Song" sequence ("We are Siamese if you please") in Disney 's Lady and
1000-418: The 1950s–1960s, as the Siamese was increasing in popularity, many breeders and cat show judges began to favour the more slender look. Breeders created increasingly long, fine-boned, narrow-headed cats through generations of selective breeding. Eventually, the modern show Siamese was bred to be extremely elongated, with a lean, tubular body, long, slender legs, a very long, very thin tail that tapers gradually into
1050-457: The Canadian wilderness searching for their beloved masters. The book was a modest success when first published but became widely known after 1963 when it was loosely adapted into a film of the same name by Walt Disney . Disney also employed the same Siamese in the role of "DC" for its 1965 crime caper That Darn Cat! , with The New York Times commenting "The feline that plays the informant, as
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#17329018856431100-566: The F.B.I. puts it, is superb. [...] This elegant, blue-eyed creature is a paragon of suavity and grace". Thai language Thai , or Central Thai (historically Siamese ; Thai: ภาษาไทย ), is a Tai language of the Kra–Dai language family spoken by the Central Thai , Mon , Lao Wiang , Phuan people in Central Thailand and the vast majority of Thai Chinese enclaves throughout
1150-547: The Khmer system first before the Thai borrowed. Old Thai had a three-way tone distinction on "live syllables" (those not ending in a stop), with no possible distinction on "dead syllables" (those ending in a stop, i.e. either /p/, /t/, /k/ or the glottal stop that automatically closes syllables otherwise ending in a short vowel). There was a two-way voiced vs. voiceless distinction among all fricative and sonorant consonants, and up to
1200-641: The King of Burma Hsinbyushin found and read the poem for the Thai cats in the Tamra Maew. The poem describes Thai cats as being as rare as gold, and anyone who owns this cat will become wealthy. He told his army to round up all the Suphalak cats and bring them back to Burma along with the other treasures. Today in Thailand , people tell this legend as a humorous explanation of the rarity of Thai cats. The pointed cat known in
1250-609: The Northwestern Tai and Lao-Phutai languages, form the Southwestern branch of Tai languages . The Tai languages are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family , which encompasses a large number of indigenous languages spoken in an arc from Hainan and Guangxi south through Laos and Northern Vietnam to the Cambodian border. Standard Thai is the principal language of education and government and spoken throughout Thailand. The standard
1300-484: The Thai-speaking area. All voiced–voiceless pairs of consonants lost the voicing distinction: However, in the process of these mergers, the former distinction of voice was transferred into a new set of tonal distinctions. In essence, every tone in Old Thai split into two new tones, with a lower-pitched tone corresponding to a syllable that formerly began with a voiced consonant, and a higher-pitched tone corresponding to
1350-463: The Tramp (1955), features the cats "Si" and "Am", both titled after the former name of Thailand, where the breed originated. The 1958 film adaptation of Bell, Book and Candle features Kim Novak 's Siamese cat "Pyewacket", a witch's familiar. The Incredible Journey (1961) by Sheila Burnford tells the story of three pets, including the Siamese cat "Tao", as they travel 300 miles (480 km) through
1400-456: The United Kingdom, all pointed Siamese-style cats are considered part of the Siamese breed. The Cat Fanciers' Association , considers only the four original fur colours as Siamese: Oriental Shorthair cats with colour points in colours or patterns aside from these four are considered Colourpoint Shorthair in that registry. The World Cat Federation has also adopted this classification, treating
1450-505: The West as "Siamese", recognised for its distinctive markings, is one of several breeds of cats from Siam described and illustrated in manuscripts called "Tamra Maew" (Cat Poems). The "Tamra Maew" is estimated to have been written from the 14th to the 18th century. In 1878, U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes received the first documented Siamese to reach the United States . The cat, named "Siam,"
1500-408: 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 and cream points, lynx (tabby) points , and tortoise-shell ("tortie") points. (For more information on cat coat terminology, see Cat coat genetics .) In
1550-472: The closely related Oriental Shorthair . The modern Siamese shares the pointed colour pattern with the Thai , or traditional Siamese, but they differ in head and body type. The pointed pattern is a form of partial albinism , resulting from a mutation in tyrosinase , an enzyme involved in melanin production. The mutated tyrosinase enzyme is heat-sensitive; it fails to work at normal body temperatures but becomes active in cooler (< 33 °C) areas of
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1600-499: The country. It is the sole official language of Thailand . Thai is the most spoken of over 60 languages of Thailand by both number of native and overall speakers. Over half of its vocabulary is derived from or borrowed from Pali , Sanskrit , Mon and Old Khmer . It is a tonal and analytic language . Thai has a complex orthography and system of relational markers . Spoken Thai, depending on standard sociolinguistic factors such as age, gender, class, spatial proximity, and
1650-445: The eye differing from normal felines. Fibres located in the temporal retina cross over in the chiasm instead of remaining uncrossed. The Siamese is predisposed to periocular leukotrichia , pinnal alopecia , and psychogenic alopecia . Young Siamese cats are predisposed to histiocytic cutaneous mast cell tumours . The Siamese is one of the more commonly affected breeds for gangliosidosis 1 . An autosomal recessive mutation in
1700-492: The kittens died soon after the show, their cause of death not documented. By 1886, four Siamese cats were imported to the UK by Eva Forestier Walker (surnamed Vyvyan after 1887 marriage) and her sister, Ada. These Siamese imports were long, had rounded heads with wedge-shaped muzzles, and large ears . The cats ranged from substantial to slender but were not either extreme. The difference in the pointed coat pattern had not been seen before in cats by Westerners. These Siamese produced
1750-515: The local patois as pronounced in Guangdong Ayutthaya , the old capital of Thailand from 1351 - 1767 A.D., was from the beginning a bilingual society, speaking Thai and Khmer . Bilingualism must have been strengthened and maintained for some time by the great number of Khmer-speaking captives the Thais took from Angkor Thom after their victories in 1369, 1388 and 1431. Gradually toward the end of
1800-498: The modern Siamese breed category, The International Cat Association (TICA) and the World Cat Federation (WCF) now accept Siamese cats of the less extreme type, and any wichianmat cat imported directly from Thailand, under the new breed name Thai . Other, mostly unofficial, names for the traditional variety are "Old-style Siamese" and "Classic Siamese", with an American variation nicknamed "Applehead". The breed standard of
1850-473: The modern Siamese calls for an elongated, tubular, and muscular body and a triangular head, forming a triangle from the tip of the nose to each tip of the ear. The eyes are almond-shaped and light blue, while the ears are large, wide-based, and positioned more towards the side of the head. The breed has a long neck, a slender tail, and fur that is short, glossy, fine and adheres to the body with no undercoat. Its pointed colour scheme and blue eyes distinguish it from
1900-547: The most significant changes occurred during the evolution from Old Thai to modern Thai. The Thai writing system has an eight-century history and many of these changes, especially in consonants and tones, are evidenced in the modern orthography . According to a Chinese source, during the Ming dynasty , Yingya Shenglan (1405–1433), Ma Huan reported on the language of the Xiānluó (暹羅) or Ayutthaya Kingdom, saying that it somewhat resembled
1950-415: The period, a language shift took place. Khmer fell out of use. Both Thai and Khmer descendants whose great-grand parents or earlier ancestors were bilingual came to use only Thai. In the process of language shift, an abundance of Khmer elements were transferred into Thai and permeated all aspects of the language. Consequently, the Thai of the late Ayutthaya Period which later became Ratanakosin or Bangkok Thai,
2000-484: The royal vocabulary according to their immediate environment. Thai and Pali, the latter from Theravada Buddhism, were added to the vocabulary. An investigation of the Ayutthaya Rajasap reveals that three languages, Thai, Khmer and Khmero-Indic were at work closely both in formulaic expressions and in normal discourse. In fact, Khmero-Indic may be classified in the same category as Khmer because Indic had been adapted to
2050-611: The skin. The heat-sensitive enzyme results in a dark colouration in the coolest parts of the cat's body, like the extremities and the face, which are cooled by the airflow through their sinuses . Siamese kittens are cream or white at birth and 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 sufficiently distinguishable 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
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2100-535: The terminology "low" reflects the lower tone variants that resulted. Modern "mid"-class consonants were voiceless unaspirated stops or affricates in Old Thai—precisely the class that triggered lowering in original tone 1 but not tones 2 or 3. Modern "high"-class consonants were the remaining voiceless consonants in Old Thai (voiceless fricatives, voiceless sonorants, voiceless aspirated stops). The three most common tone "marks" (the lack of any tone mark, as well as
2150-496: The three tones of Old Thai were split have since merged into five in standard Thai, with the lower variant of former tone 2 merging with the higher variant of former tone 3, becoming the modern "falling" tone. หม ม หน น, ณ หญ ญ หง ง ป ผ พ, ภ บ ฏ, ต ฐ, ถ ท, ธ ฎ, ด จ ฉ ช Edward Blencowe Gould Edward Blencowe Gould ( Stoke-in-Teignhead , Devon 9 August 1847 – Devon 16 November 1916)
2200-419: The trait is far less common today. Still, this lack of a tapetum lucidum even in uncross-eyed cats, causes reduced vision for the cat at night. This trait makes them vulnerable to urban dangers such as night-time vehicular traffic. Unlike many other blue-eyed white cats , Siamese cats do not have reduced hearing ability. The Siamese suffers from abnormal visual projections due to the lateral geniculate body of
2250-423: The two marks termed mai ek and mai tho ) represent the three tones of Old Thai, and the complex relationship between tone mark and actual tone is due to the various tonal changes since then. Since the tone split, the tones have changed in actual representation to the point that the former relationship between lower and higher tonal variants has been completely obscured. Furthermore, the six tones that resulted after
2300-508: The urban/rural divide, is partly mutually intelligible with Lao , Isan , and some fellow Thai topolects . These languages are written with slightly different scripts, but are linguistically similar and effectively form a dialect continuum . Thai language is spoken by over 69 million people (2020). Moreover, most Thais in the northern (Lanna) and the northeastern (Isan) parts of the country today are bilingual speakers of Central Thai and their respective regional dialects because Central Thai
2350-466: The vast majority of Siamese had seal (extremely dark brown, almost black) points, but occasionally Siamese was 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 grey) points, genetically a diluted chocolate. These colours were considered "inferior" seal points and were not qualified for showing or breeding. These shades were eventually accepted by
2400-1116: Was a British Consul in Bangkok , Thailand . Gould was the first to bring Siamese cats to Europe in 1884 when he brought a pair back to Britain for his sister, Lilian Jane Gould , who went on to be co-founder of the Siamese Cat Club in 1901. The cats were shown at The Crystal Palace in 1885. Gould started his career as a junior interpreter in Siam (now called Thailand ) on 20 January 1868. Shortly after he became first, and later second, assistant on 1 May 1878. He became Consul in Siam on 27 November 1885 before being transferred to Port Said , Egypt on 13 August 1891 and then Consul General in Alexandria on 1 November 1897. In 1895, he married Alice Elizabeth Gordon (1870–unknown). They had no children. He retired on 3 November 1909, and died seven years later in 1916, aged 69, at his home in Devon. His brother
2450-449: Was a thorough mixture of Thai and Khmer. There were more Khmer words in use than Tai cognates. Khmer grammatical rules were used actively to coin new disyllabic and polysyllabic words and phrases. Khmer expressions, sayings, and proverbs were expressed in Thai through transference. Thais borrowed both the Royal vocabulary and rules to enlarge the vocabulary from Khmer. The Thais later developed
2500-718: Was sent from Bangkok to the American Consul. In 1884, the British Consul-General in Bangkok , Edward Blencowe Gould (1847–1916), brought a breeding pair of the cats, Pho and Mia, back to Britain as a gift for his sister, Lilian Jane Gould (who, married in 1895 as Lilian Jane Veley, went on to co-found the Siamese Cat Club in 1901). In 1885, Gould's UK cats Pho and Mia produced three Siamese kittens—Duen Ngai, Kalohom, and Khromata—who were shown with their parents that same year at London's Crystal Palace Show. Their appearance and behaviour attracted attention, but all three of
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