Siamese

The Siamese cat does not meow. The Siamese cat speaks its mind. It has a view on your being late, on the contents of its bowl, on the closed bathroom door, on the weather, and on the fact that you moved the chair again — and each of these opinions it delivers in that famous low, resonant voice of its, which can be heard through two walls. You have a question? It has an answer. You don't have a question? It has one anyway. With a Siamese you do not live in silence — you live in a conversation that begins in the morning at your waking and quiets down only in the evening, when it falls asleep nestled against your neck, mid-sentence.

This self-confidence has, moreover, royal papers. The Siamese comes from old Siam — today's Thailand — where for centuries it lived in palaces and temples, described already in old manuscripts as a courtly cat. Legend has it that princesses, entering the bath, hung their rings on its kinked tail — and that it was precisely for this reason that it was so diligently guarded. Beyond the country's borders it traveled in only one role: a royal gift. When in 1884 a pair of Siamese named Pho and Mia arrived as a present in London and stood at a show, Europe was struck dumb — no one before had seen a cat with a cream body, a dark mask, and eyes like two sapphires. The sensation continues, unbroken, to this day.

And nature added to the Siamese one more extraordinary signature: its coloring is literally a map of its own body temperature. The dark pigment forms in it only where it is cooler — on the face, ears, paws, and tail — which is why Siamese kittens are born almost white and only over time “develop” like a photograph. The rest of the cat is equally striking: the slender, muscular silhouette of an athlete that in one second can find itself atop the wardrobe, learn to retrieve, walk on a leash, and open doors — most often the ones you have just wanted to leave closed.

But this whole opera has one very serious libretto: love. The Siamese does not talk at you — it talks with you, because it has chosen you as its human and treats that decision deadly seriously. It follows you from room to room, participates in everything, and in the evening reports for duty on your lap like someone returning to their place at the table. And that is why solitude wounds it more than most cats: a Siamese left alone for whole days does not sulk — it suffers, ever more loudly and ever more sadly. This is a cat for someone who really wants a companion. Ideally with a second feline companion for a pair, if the home often stands empty.

Because the Siamese cat is not an animal to own — it is a full-time relationship, with overtime and a very well-developed communications department. With good care this conversation can last as long as twenty years: two decades of comments, monologues, interjections, and that one quiet goodnight purr, delivered straight into your neck.

And one thing must be settled at the start, so there are no misunderstandings later: the last word in this house will always belong to it. But when you hear how much tenderness it can fit into that last word — you will give it to it yourself.