Siamese Cat behavior advice please
by Susana
(Portugal)
Modern Siamese Cat - photo copyright Helmi Flick - photo added by Michael of POC.
Hello Michael, congratulations on the website, it´s really well constructed and very interesting! I decided to use this form because I´ve registered in the forum but I can´t find the place to put a new post... I know it should be somewhere, but... Anyway,
I´m from Portugal and I have a 2 year old traditional Siamese cat. He has been quite of a companion, although he had some weird demanding habits. For example, he would scratch on the door every night or push it until it bangs, but without closing it, so he could make that noise repeatedly, i don´t know if you know this type of behaviour...i had to get up and give him some food, otherwise he wouldn't stop... anyway, he is absolutely adorable and we're really close to each other... but now i had to leave the country for 3 months because of work and decided to leave him with my boyfriend, who is someone the cat already knew instead of leaving him alone at home and having someone feeding him.
I don't know if this was a good decision, by what I see in the internet when i talk to my boyfriend, the cat seems just fine, he just runs around like crazy more often than he used to... my biggest concern is that the cat doesn't go out much now and he used to 'take a walk' by himself for a couple of hours everyday and then come back. (the area where we lived allowed that).
My question is: is it OK to take the cat back to my house on weekends for example (it's near) let him have his walk and then take him back to my boyfriend's house, or that would leave the cat even more confused?
Apparently he lost the habit of scratching on doors and making noise during the night because my boyfriend just didn't pay any attention and now the cat behaviour is a lot better... so, was i teaching him wrong by getting up and doing what he wanted me to do? I guess I was, but I just wanted some sleep 🙂
I'm concerned about whether I made the right decision, because I have left for some periods and I could tell when I came home the cat really missed me as much as I missed him. Now he seems pretty fine, but I just don't know how these absences (this one is my last one) really affect the cat (or not).
So, as you can see, a lot o questions... if you want you can post this on the forum, that's what I was hoping to do... so, I'll wait for some help then... thanks for your time and congratulations again on the website!
About Siamese Cat Behavior generally....From the Creator of Pictures of Cats.org:
The Siamese and indeed the long haired version of it, the Balinese, are vocal and tend to have loud voices (c.f. the British Shorthair, for example, which is a very quiet, almost silent voice).
The Siamese Cat gets a lot of pleasure from sitting on the owner's lap and sleeping on their bed. This cat likes to be close to their human companion.
The Siamese is also intelligent (see cat intelligence), inquisitive (not unusual for any cat but perhaps more so for this cat breed) and likes to be nosy.
This makes for a potentially demanding cat and Susana's experiences, described above, support this. Still, if you like cats, satisfying a Siamese cat's demands is not a burden but a pleasure. Plenty of interaction is required and stroking, loving and general TLC. This creates a great bond.
Maybe this is why the Siamese is the most popular cat breed according to this website's popularity poll.
Another cat breed with a similar vocal nature is the Oriental Shorthair
See: Modern Siamese and/or Traditional Siamese and the Thai cat (a form of Classic Siamese in my opinion).
Michael
