Siamese & Orientals

I share Lisa James's appreciation for Siamese and Orientals, but she needs to look farther back than 30 years ago at photos of Siamese to understand the history of how the body type in the breed has been changed via selective breeding.

Even if she would just look back to the 1960s when many Siamese had already been bred for a more extreme conformation, there were still Siamese grand champions who were quite moderate in comparison to the show Siamese today.
For example look at some of the photos in the 1964 edition of "This is the Siamese Cat" by the well known breeder Marge Naples (Di Napoli)

The breed has been around for centuries in Thailand where they are called Wichienmaat, and first began to be brought to the West and bred there in the late 1800s, so it always baffles me when breeders of the modern type point to the look of show Siamese around 1980 as some sort of proof that they "always" had that body type!

Thank you for comments and a great photograph. I always like peoples' views. About Helmi. She has very generously agreed to allow me to publish her photos on the site. So she has donated them for this site's benefit as it is about cat welfare and a good proportion of money raised goes to charitable concerns.

Helmi is also the best cat photographer, in my view. And I don't think Chanan would want to show his photos on this site unless he sold me a limited right to do so. Also it might upset Helmi and the last thing I want to do is that. Helmi is a very generous person. And I am eternally grateful to her. Without her help this site would not be what it is.

But if Chanan wants to and if Helmi accepts that, of course, I am fine with it.