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Siamese cattery in Florence
The Siamese and the Oriental are the exact same cat so much so that they are considered sister breeds and can be freely mated with each other: the kittens will be born either Siamese or Oriental. The only difference is in the colours: the Siamese is colourpoint, i.e. it has a light body and dark extremities (muzzle, ears, paws and tail) with blue eyes, whereas the Oriental is not point and has green eyes. Both can be of different colours, from black (called seal point in the Siamese and ebony in the Oriental) to red. Obviously in the Siamese the colours will only show on the extremities and the colour name will be given according to the point colour.
Two Siamese can only ever give birth to Siamese, as the Siamese gene (called cs) is recessive, whereas two Orientals can also give birth to Siamese if they are heterozygous carriers of the cs gene.
Below is a Siamese and an Oriental close together.
Siamaristocracy Fierce Drusilla, siamese lilac point.
Yeswecat Radio Gaga black tortie oriental.
As can be seen in the Siamese cat the colour (lilac, a very light grey with mauve highlights) is concentrated only on the extremities, in the photo clearly evident on the nose. The eyes are blue. The Oriental on the side is on the other hand a black tortie (orange in cats is called red, just as dark grey is called blue) and has the colour over the whole body unlike the Siamese. The eyes are green.
It can be seen that the structure of the head is identical and represents the Siamese head: a very long muzzle (the Siamese and Oriental are dolichomorphic breeds, from the Greek δόλιχος, long) and pointed, very wide ears at the base that narrow to a point and placed so as to continue the lines of the muzzle forming the famous Siamese triangle. The eyes should be almond-shaped and tilted outwards, giving the classic oriental look to the two breeds. If you look closely at the snout by connecting the outer tip of each eye to the tip of the nose, you can see a second triangle inside the wider outer triangle. As can be seen, the Siamese and Oriental are geometric, pointed cats, the opposite of the more rounded breeds such as the British shorthair or Persian.
In addition to the head, the body is also very important: it must be slender and long, muscular and nevral, tubular and the hips must be no wider than the shoulders. The legs must be very long as must the tail, which tapers at the tip.
As you may have guessed by now, the two breeds are identical in everything except colour, and when you say Siamese you are referring to Oriental and vice versa.
The international EMS codes to identify the two breeds are SIA for Siamese and OSH, followed by letters identifying the colour (Drusilla is SIA c, where c indicates lilac and Gaga is OSH f, where f indicates a black tortie cat). For a complete list of colour codes, should you be interested, you can go here.
Obviously the point system in judging the two breeds is identical, except for colour.
In the Siamese, in addition to all the points considered for the Oriental, the famous ‘contrast’ will be taken into account, i.e. the difference in colour between the light body and the coloured extremities, which must be sharp and marked. In the Oriental there will obviously be no points for contrast,
but more generally for colour. (Depending on the colour it must have a very vivid black or very pronounced stripes in tabby (tiger) cats).
Here is the point scale for SIA/OSH:
Head: 25 points
Eye colour: 15 points
Body: 25 points
Condition: 5 points
Coat:
SIA: contrast 10 points, colour 10 points, quality and texture 10 points
OSH: colour 20 points, quality and texture 10 points
TOTAL: 100 points
I would like to conclude by saying that EVERY SIA/OSH breeder MUST be familiar with the standard of the two breeds, but that there is no such thing as the perfect cat factory. Every breeder, within the standard, tries to come close to the idea of Siamese he has in mind, but of course he has no magic wand. With one litter he will fix a characteristic he is looking for, but it will take him three more to find in his cats an element he wanted. Sometimes a mating does not give the desired results and one has to start again: in short, the perfect cat does not exist and selection (which is a key word in any serious breeding) is slow work and requires a lot of patience.
Just to close, I would like to point out that the Siamese family, in addition to the Orientals, includes the Balinese (Siamese with semi-long hair) and the Oriental Longhair (Oriental with semi-long hair): they too are identical in every respect to the Siamese and Orientals except for the length and texture of their hair.