Breed Profile
Siamese
Well known as the blue eyed cat from Blue Peter, or the naughty characters from Lady & the Tramp, the Siamese is one of the most popular cats in the world.
The Siamese is a highly vocal cat, and likes to be with its people most of the time, helping with the housework, playing a game of retrieve, or cadging a free ride on a shoulder.
Siamese cats are not spiteful, in fact they are one of the most loving and affectionate animals. There character can be compared to a devoted dog, always rushing to the door to great you, following you around, and desperate for attention.
The Siamese comes in a wide assortment of colours, the most well known being the Seal point, but other colours include, Chocolate, Blue, Lilac, Caramel, Red, Cream and now Apricot. There are also Tabby and Tortie points.
Balinese
The Balinese is a Siamese cat with long, silky, close lying coat and a plumed tail. They have the same wonderful temperament as the Siamese, noisy and loving and very intelligent. The coat on the Balinese needs no extra care than a Siamese, although they do enjoy a brush whilst lounging on a lap. The coat is so silky it does not tangle like a Persian style coat.
The Balinese was originally registered as a 'Longhaired Siamese', and examples were known from the early 1920s. The occasional long-haired kittens in a Siamese litter were seen as an oddity, and sold as household pets rather than as show cats. This changed in the mid-1950s, when two breeders, Mrs. Marion Dorsey of Rai-Mar Cattery in California and Mrs. Helen Smith of MerryMews Cattery in New York, decided that they would commence a breeding programme for the longhaired cats. Helen Smith named the cats 'Balinese' because she felt they showed the grace and beauty of Balinese dancers, and because 'Longhaired Siamese' seemed a rather unwieldy name for such graceful felines. The breed became quite popular after this, and a number of breeders began working on 'perfecting' the Balinese appearance.
The colours are all the same as in the Siamese, and the Balinese has the same brilliant blue eyes.
Oriental Long Hair
The Oriental Longhair, formerly known as the Angora, is a breed of cat that features a tubular, Siamese-style body (known in the cat fancy as oriental type), but with a longer coat than the short-haired Siamese. The coat can also come in a variety of colours and patterns, including tabby, "tortie", and solid. With the exception of the Foreign White, the Oriental comes with green eyes. The tail is a magnificent plume, which as in the Balinese, needs no more care than the short haired cats.
In 2002, the Angora was renamed Oriental Longhair by British cat fancies. This avoided confusion with the Turkish Angora. With no globally recognised naming convention, other cat fancies refer to this type as Javanese, Foreign Longhair or Mandarin.
The Oriental Longhair has the same body type and nature of an Oriental cat - lean, sleek, intelligent and inquisitive - and a silky medium-length coat with a plumed tail, just a coloured in Balinese, or a hairy coloured in Siamese!