The four basic colors of the Thai cats are: seal, blue, chocolate and lilac, plus the colors red and cream.


The extremities (“points”) must be uniformly colored. They are always darker than the rest of the base coat which fundamentally is colored white with a glimmer of the corresponding point color. With points is meant that mask, ears, legs, feet and tail have a different, darker color than the rest of the body. The mask covers the nose, whisker pads, eye rims and front and is connected by lines with the ears. The Thai are fully colored with about a year. They become darker when they get older, especially on the back. But all kittens are white when they are born. Their points gradually develop, and after about one year they have their final color.
If you look at the history of the color development and diversity of the Thai cats, you cannot help without considering the Siamese colors.


 Here we show some fine examples of cats of all our ITC members.

SEAL POINT


Magic Thai Goblin´s Henk

Seal Point is the most traditional and most famous color of the Thai. The first Siameses imported to Europe and exhibited in London’s Crystal Palace had this color. The point color is a dark black-brown which is called seal, the body color is a whitish beige.

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Here you can see some beautiful examples:

BLUE POINT


Magic Thai Goblin´s Zsazsa

Blue point is the genetically color-diluted version of the seal point Thai cat. The point color is blue-gray, the body color is an ice-colored white with a blue glimmer on the back.
The first appearance of a blue Siamese registered in a British show is from the year 1896 in London. First, the judges refused to judge Siamese cats of this color, because they were not recognized as Siamese.
At that time the judges probably did not know that blue point was just a rare color. But blue colored cats were more often seen even in Siam. In the 1930s, there was a growing interest in the blue point Siamese, so that nothing stood in the way of their recognition in 1934.

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Here  you can see some beautiful examples:

CHOCOLATE POINT


Magic Hopfe Cat´s Chocolat

The points look like milk-chocolate, the body color is ivory. A particular gene (B) is responsible for the coat pattern. The chocolate point color was known for quite some time. First animals were shown already in the 1880s on shows, but the breeders thought they were poorly colored seal point Siameses. That is why these cats were sterilized rather than used for breeding.
The selective breeding started only in the 1930s. The color was recognized in 1950.

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Here  you can see some beautiful examples:

LILAC POINT


Magic Thai Goblin´s Iorek

Lilac point is the genetically color-diluted version of the chocolate point Thai cat. The point color is light grey with a pink shimmer, the body color is off-white, possibly with pale purple shading.
Maybe the first lilac point Siamese was a cat that was presented in 1896 in the UK. It was described as “not all blue” and therefore disqualified before the end of the competition. At that time these Siameses were considered to be poorly colored blue points. In 1960, after several years of pure breeding, lilac point was finally recognized as a separate Siamese color.
Older names for this color are “frost point” or “lavender”.

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Here  you can see some beautiful examples:

RED POINT


Magic Thai Goblin´s Yolina

The first red point Siameses were shown at an exhibition in 1934. However, this line was not continued to breed. Two selective breeding programs for red lines started in the 40s in the U.S. and UK (later also in Belgium and The Netherlands).
The resulting color is due to the outcross with another race (EKH). By this outcross, a tortoiseshell half-siamese female was born which gave birth to red point kitten after mating with a thoroughbred Siamese male.
The recognition of the color was difficult because the association, in which the recognition was filed, wanted to label this Siamese as “Foreign Shorthair”. For the red point breeders this was unacceptable because the fact was ignored that the cats were Siameses both phenotypically and – 10 years after the initial outcross – also genetically.
In 1967, the color was accepted by the GCCF. In October 1973, red was finally recognized as a breeding color. The point color is a deep dark warm red to orange, while the body color is off-white to cream. Nose leather and paw pads are dark pink. The gene XO is responsible for the red color of the female cats. This gene is the only color gene that is inherited in a sex-linked way.
Within this color there are very large fluctuations. The scale ranges from a yellowish gray to carrot red and deep dark red. The dark red color, which is often found in pedigreed cats, is the result of a systematic breeding. Another term for red point is “flame point”.

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Here  you can see some beautiful examples:

CREME POINT


Magic Thai Goblin´s Habakuk

Cream point is the genetically color-diluted version of the red point Thai cat. The point color is a pure pastel cream, while the body color is creamy white. Nose leather and footpads are pink. In October 1973, cream was finally recognized as a breeding color and in 1977 the color finally received the championship status.

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Here  you can see some beautiful examples:

TORTIE POINT


Magic Thai Goblin´s Zulana

The point color always appears in combination with a shade of red. Nose leather and paw pads correspond to the respective point color, but are mixed with pink. As with the red cats, the XO gene is – among other things – responsible for the coloration.
Red will always appear in combination with seal and chocolate. Cream, however, always appears in combination with blue and lilac.
The tortie pattern which consists of different-colored patches of different sizes is individual and unique to each cat. Tortie point cats result from the mating of red/cream point males and females in the primary colors of the Siamese. The kittens are always females (there are very rare genetic exceptions). In February 1971, tortie point was finally approved as a standard color.

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Here  you can see some beautiful examples:

TABBY POINT


The point color, body color and paw pads correspond to the solid point variants, while the nose leather looks pink with a dark rim.
First pictures of tabby point Siamese are found at the end of the 1940s. Serious breeding approaches started in 1960 by two different breeders by crossbreeding of striped European Shorthair cats. Tabby point Siameses were recognized in the UK in 1966. Tabby point is also known as Lynx point.

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Here  you can see some beautiful examples:

TORBIE (TORTIETABBY) POINT


Magic Thai Goblin´s Ixona

If the four standard colors appear in combination with red/cream, the color is called tortie.
Red will always appear in combination with seal and chocolate, whereas cream will always appear in combination with blue and lilac.
In addition, the tortie variation can have tabby markings, often referred to as torbie (tortietabby). In this case the red component can vary greatly, so that sometimes a torbie point cat cannot be identified at first sight! In October 1973, tortie tabbypoint was finally recognized as a breeding color.

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Here  you can see some beautiful examples:

GOLDEN TABBYPOINT


Lissa Thai Shining

Golden brown striped markings. Body: ivory to cream colored. Points on face, ears, paws and tail with golden brown stripes. The tip of the tail and the ears are black. On the forehead the letter "M" is clearly visible, stripes over the cheeks and  "fingerprints" on the outside ear, nose has a dark brown frame and the tip of the nose is salmon colored.

Golden tabbypoint are bred only outside of ITC  in Russia and Italy. The genetic fingerprint leading to this particular coloring is unclear and difficult to follow through the generations.

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Postscript:

Also, there are Siamese with caramel, apricot, cinnamon, fawn and white color. All Siamese have blue eyes.

*On November 5, 1962, cat breeders in England started a breeding program, in which they started crossing dominant white British shorthaired cats and seal pointed Siamese. That was the foundation of the Foreign Whites – white Siamese.

* In the 1960's a seal point Siamese  was mated to a sorrel Abyssinian stud.From the resulting offspring (cinnamon carriers) in cross with Siamese resulted cinnamon Siamese. In October 1993,Cinnamon, Caramel and Fawn Points were granted Preliminary recognition

*Caramel Points are the newest of this group to gain recognition, and their coloring comes from the presence of a ‘dilute modifier’ gene. As its name suggests, this dilute modifier gene (Dm) only acts on the already dilute colors, which are blue, lilac and fawn. The DM gene gives a brownish tone to these colors, resulting in blue-based, lilac-based or fawn-based Caramel Points. In reality, lilac-based and fawn-based Caramels are very similar to each other. caramel has first been identified as a different colour in a litter in England as far back as 1974. The mother of the caramel  was the result of a cross of a Shaded Silver dam and a Siamese Red point sire carrying dilution (blue). The poor typed Shaded Silver dam came from a mismating between a Chinchilla Persian and a Siamese.

*Apricot, the colour that appears when a cream cat carries the dilute modifying gene, appeared as early as 1975 when Pat Turner mated a tortie shaded silver Oriental to a lilac point Siamese. In June 1998 Apricot Points (and Apricot Tabby Points) were also granted Preliminary recognition and joined the Assessment class.

In the breeding of the ITC these colors have no importance, since the focus is on the classical colors of the THAI.


Origin:

Photoarchiv Historic Siamese

History of CFA Siamese

Die ersten Fotos von Siamkatzen in England um 1900

Kleuren van de Points

A SHORT HISTORY OF TABBY POINTED SIAMESE

A History of Red, Tortie, Cream & Apricot Point Siamese in the UK

History of the Redpoint Europe , US & SA

History Cinnamon & Fawn point Siam

History foreign white

Foreign white

The Genetics of Caramel and Apricot Inheritance

International Thai Cats

Siamo una comunità indipendente di allevatori e gli amanti del gatto Thai a livello internazionale.