Traditional Old Style Siamese are indeed very particular cats! My late wife Marilyn and I kept Siamese cats for most of our years together, until she sadly died in May 2016, and we always enjoyed their character and company. It wasn’t until our beloved Blue Point Millie died, and we were looking for another Siamese, that we realised just how much of the breed had changed, and we didn’t quite like what we saw. The jaw of the “modern Siamese” had become narrower, and the ears, which were generally larger, seemed, in many cases, to stick out sideways. As we went on searching, we came to realise that there is now a clear distinction between Traditional, or Old Style Siamese, and their more modern cousins, which seem to have been bred to conform to cat show standards that we found quite baffling.
Eventually our search ended when we found Mitzi (Wicca Suchin), who was lovingly bred by Cynthia Hopper in Kent. We both readily agreed with Cynthia that we should breed from Mitzi, as we all wanted to increase the stock of healthy Old Style Siamese, and to perpetuate the blood lines from many years ago. We had had previous experience of breeding Siamese, some thirty years earlier, when we first moved to this house. At that time, Marilyn received much support and encouragement from the late Grace Denny.
My new partner Jacqueline and I now have four cats living with us. Three of them live in the house, with extensive access to well over half an acre of garden, some of it lightly managed, and with many mature trees, which the cats often climb. Meanwhile, our soppy but very handsome Blue Point stud boy Callum (who was bred by Sandra Engle, at the Sandypoints Cattery, and imported all the way from Harleysville, Pennsylvania) lives in a large enclosed outdoor pen, with his own heated and insulated sleeping quarters. Callum gets his exclusive time to prowl around the garden, usually for about an hour and a half in the morning, and a similar time before it gets dark in the evening. We keep the other cats indoors during these times, largely to avoid confrontations between Callum and “Uncle” Dylan, who is our older neutered Lilac Point boy.
Dylan and the two girls, Mitzi (born December 2012) and her daughter Lalana (born March 2015), love lying in front of the woodburner in the Winter time, and kittens born in Autumn or Winter soon find the warmth of the Aga. All of our cats can enjoy frequent and prolonged access to the garden thanks to the Freedom Fence containment system, which has been installed here for many years. It is particularly well-suited to securing larger areas, such as this garden; other, fence type solutions would be more applicable to smaller plots. Although one side of the property is bounded by a busy main road, all of the cats that have lived here since the Freedom Fence system was installed have been kept safe. The house and garden are otherwise surrounded by farmland, in a lovely part of Suffolk, not far from the coast.
Page revised by David Cutting 14 August 2017