whybreed

The Prestwick-Beresford Old-Style Siamese
Breed Preservation Society
Why Preserve the Old-Style Siamese?

Many people prefer the moderate, mildly rounded appearance of the Old-Style Siamese to the extreme, highly elongated, angular appearance of the modern Siamese. It's like preferring art by Russell or Remington to art by Picasso. We know that Siamese were more variable in appearance one hundred years ago than they are today and the decision to breed for one specific ultra-Oriental look was just an arbitrary one. Some of us now find that we just don’t like our Siamese to look like Vogue models. We’d rather that they retained a more moderate Oriental build.

Another important reason to keep breeding the Old-Style Siamese is to preserve healthy genetic diversity within the Siamese breed overall. The ultra-Oriental Siamese shown in the big cat associations tend to be descended over and over again from the same handful of top show champion studs. While this has allowed contemporary Siamese breeders to achieve greater consistency in the appearance of today’s Siamese and while it has allowed them to achieve ever-greater heights of perfection in color, pattern contrast, and extreme Oriental type, it is potentially dangerous.

In producing cats that are cosmetic clones of each other, breeders have also inadvertently cloned some genetic defects. It's unavoidable. Most genetic defects are subtle and cannot be recognized at birth or are not evident in every cat that inherits the defect. Breeders cannot recognize and eliminate subtle or late-appearing defects from their breeding cats. For example, a defect that shortens the lifespan of a cat by four years would not be noticed by most breeders, or if noticed, not in time to affect their breeding decisions. Indeed, most breeders quit breeding after only five to ten years. Cloning cats from the same show champion ancestors sooner or later will result in every Siamese carrying the same defects, which greatly increases the likelihood of their offspring inheriting the defects in full force (homozygous form).

This has already happened in many breeds of dog. Dogs have been intensively selectively bred for much longer than cats. Eighty-five percent of Collies now carry a genetic defect that can cause defective vision or blindness. Or take Cavalier Spaniels. The longstanding official estimate is that 50% of Cavaliers carry a defect that causes mitral valve disease with its associated heart damage and septicemia. Breeders say that currently it appears that about 80-90% of Cavalier Spaniels are affected. Where the breed once lived on average to be 15 to 17 years old, now the average age at death is more like 8 or 9 years old. For cat lovers the time to take action is NOW. We need to prevent what has happened to the dog breeds from happening to our cats.

Even if cats could be perfectly healthy, without defects, and all alike, they would still be in trouble. They could fall prey to new, deadly diseases. That’s because among identical cats there are not any cats with unusual mutations or traits that can give the breed resistance to a brand new disease.

The Old-Style Siamese tend to have a more varied set of ancestors than their ultra-Oriental cousins. They share the same original Siamese ancestors that modern Siamese have, but the Old-Style Siamese tend to have many different ancestors than their cousins as well. Many of those ancestors were discarded from the breeding programs that produced today's CFA show Siamese because they did not have the desired extreme body type traits. Thus, their traits, including possibly valuable noncosmetic traits, were lost from the modern Siamese lines and survived only in the breeding programs of non-mainstream breeders. The Old-Style Siamese are a potential source of genetic diversity and they provide survival insurance to the entire Siamese breed.

Why should you join PREOSSIA and help us promote the Old-Style Siamese?

The Old-Style Siamese will not continue to exist unless people know about them, talk about them, make movies about them, write about them, and continue to buy kittens or adopt retired adults from breeders. Also, they will not continue to exist unless some new people join the ranks of breeders and work together to maintain the genetic health of the cats. Right now the Old-Style Siamese are not found in books about pedigreed cats and are rarely featured in magazine articles or other media. By becoming a member of PREOSSIA you can work with others to increase public awareness of the breed. By showing the large cat associations that there is public support for the Old-Style Siamese, you can convince them to recognize these cats and allow them to be shown again using their own breed standard. Public support will also convince book authors and publishers to devote books and articles to the Old-Style Siamese.

For questions about PREOSSIA, email PREOSSIA Membership or the Marketing Chair. For questions about this site, email the Webmaster.

(c) Text and photos copyright 1999-2007 A.D. by PREOSSIA. Some photos and materials on or linked to this site are copyrighted by individual PREOSSIA members and their friends and are found here with their permission. You may link to this page, but may not copy or reproduce any portion of it or anything linked to it without written consent from the copyright holders.

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