Hello, I’m Dr. Karyn! Learn my introduction to be taught extra about me and meet my 5 hilarious cats: Clutch, Cyril, Alex, Zelda, and Zazzles.
Simply the opposite day I used to be serving to a colleague decipher totally different Siamese cat colours, which is tough sufficient, and NOT one thing you need to screw up in entrance of the improper particular person. However then we had been confronted with the complicated realization that there are two types of Siamese cats.
I used to be arguing that I had labored with a breeder of Oriental and Siamese cats and was very aware of their lengthy, lanky our bodies and wedge-shaped heads. They’d grown up with Siamese cats and knew them to be extra compact and rounder of head. It seems that we had been each proper, which is simply infuriating!
This perplexing state of affairs additionally drew me to a different conclusion, which is that the cat fanciers of the world actually need to come back collectively and get organized. Not like the canine facet of issues, which has the American Kennel Membership, a single governing physique that holds dominion over the foundations, laws, registrations, and requirements of canine breeds within the US, America’s cat lovers have a range to select from.
To additional compound my cat breed-induced headache, every of those organizations has a special thought about what constitutes a cat breed and what doesn’t.
CFA acknowledges 45 distinct cat breeds, whereas TICA lists 73, however their listing contains longhaired and shorthaired varieties individually. The ACFA virtually agrees with TICA, itemizing 69 cat breeds, and the CFF acknowledges “at the very least 32 totally different breeds”. In order that’s good and simple. You would possibly marvel why there are such a lot of totally different cat breed associations, and why there’s a lack of consensus between them. Properly, let’s simply say that it’s not simply the cats that get their claws out – meow!
Again to My Siamese Conundrum
Getting again to my complicated Siamese cat drawback.
I consulted all 4 of the foremost US cat associations, in addition to trying out the Fédération Internationale Féline (FIFe) and UK’s Governing Council of the Cat Fancy (GCCF), and one factor they may all agree on (wonderful!) was that the Siamese breed was our buddy with the wedge-shaped head. However what of those spherical or ‘apple’ head Siamese? That is the place the plot doth thicken.
The applehead Siamese is taken into account to be a throwback to the unique, extra conventional type of the Siamese, which, by way of selective breeding over the past century or so, advanced into the extra angular cat we see immediately. So what concerning the applehead? Properly, in the event you ask TICA and FIFe, these cats at the moment are categorized as a separate breed, the Thai cat. In the meantime, CFA, CFF, and the ACFA seem like pretending they don’t exist. To make issues much more complicated, the GCCF acknowledges the Thai cat, however a special model to that of the TICA and FIFe. The GCCF Thai cat has the coding TAI, and is actually a colorpoint model of the blue Korat, whereas the opposite model of the Thai cat, allotted the code THI, has come from the Siamese breed.
Why does it have to be so complicated??
Why Does This Hassle Me?
Look, on the finish of the day, for a moggy-lover like myself, I’m not all that apprehensive if they’ve apple heads or wedge heads, simply so long as they’ve the precise variety of heads. I simply discover it irritating that, in a world the place the web has eradicated the impediment of distance, and DNA testing can assist determine shared genetic traits, after I or anybody else plugs ‘Siamese cat’ into the search field, we’re given conflicting outcomes on what must be a quite simple query.
I’m not asking for world peace, I’m simply asking that the cat fanciers of the world get collectively and agree on this Thai vs. Siamese cat breed state of affairs with out an excessive amount of fur flying.
Then once more, maybe I’ll have higher luck with world peace.
This text is part of Dr. Karyn’s collection along with her 5 hilarious cats.
