Originally published at: Siamese cats are heatmaps of themselves | Boing Boing
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I have a siamese mix but the tabby portions of her fur do change in color a bit based on the temperature and she used to have the typical black and white pattern up until she had her kittens and decided to come in (she was quite young at the time).
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Take that, Korzybski
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This is a truly Wonderful Thing. You just made my day! Does anyone have a thermal camera and a Siamese cat to verify?
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Himalayan rabbits also have temperature-dependent point colouration.
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i had no idea! poor kitties, you can see the cold spots… our (non-Siamese) kitties always have cold ears and toes.
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This mutation is sometimes referred to as the Himalayan gene. Our standard Siamese changes color about twice a year with the seasonal coat shedding. He got pretty light this past summer, but it looks like the winter fur is coming in darker.
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Tonks are the best cats ever! Miss mine so much!!
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My partner got a kitten that met her particular aesthetic requirements (white, fluffy). I thought her tastes were highly overdetermined, not being a cat person. Said kitten immediately required major surgery, and so was shaved almost completely bald.
When it grew back in, it was dirty white on most of the body but almost black along the spine, because that part is always exposed to cold air when the kitten curls up into a ball. My partner’s mother pronounced this pattern “reverse skunk,” which I thought was hilarious and laughed out loud at. That proved to be a tactical error in our relationship.
(The coats that replaced the first coat grew back whiter every time because they had more insulation.)
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So a Siamese cat is basically the mood ring of cats.
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The derp machine that is our standard Siamese has many ways to show us his mood, the color of his fur is not one of them.
That would be kinda neat, though.
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We have a Siamese and a Burmese - The Teen calls them “deconstructed Tonkinese”.
Edited for spelling
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The map is not the territory?
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Is this the same mutation what makes Siamese cats fucking jerks?
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Our two Siamese are totally not jerks. Yes, small sample size, but we absolutely will seek to adopt the “imperfect” Siamese kittens that show up at the pound again when the time comes. These two have been great companions:
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This is solid cat trivia. More please.
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Jerks? Not any more or less than a regular cat would be.
Bratty? Chatty? Most definitely.
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Clearly one of your cats is a lot colder than the other
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My mother always had a couple of Siamese cats on the go, one would drop off the peg and another would magically appear to haunt and torture us children.
Siamese cats are real fucking little units!
Anyhoo, this one cat, female (if gender even matters to these evil creatures) would start to display male behaviors and start marking territory, spraying on anything that didn’t move… not sure where I was going with this… Oh yeah… the little #@&% would change to a darker colour in these times.
Have a cat if you must, but really think hard about having a Siamese!
Yes I have been damaged by a creature that is small and terrifying in equal measures.
They are also great for cuddles.
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Yeeeaaaaars ago our tuxedo mama cat gave birth to a mystery litter of 5 white kittens. Over the next weeks they started turning tannish on their noses, ears, legs, and tails. Super adorable! Mom picked a fluffy Himalayan-style one for herself and my father picked a short-haired one. They all darkened up nicely to Siamese coloring, but were never totally svelte (could have been our free-feeding setup). The rest were eagerly fought over at the county fair when they reached adoptable age.
The short-haired cat, Sooty, was smart and amazing. We had a beaver pond in our front yard and she noticed how all of the birds would hang out on the beaver house to stay safe, so she swam over to it regularly to stalk them. We’d bring 5-gallon buckets of pond ice water in all winter to humidify the house (pot on the furnace) and she’d splash around in them up past her elbows to dig out little ice chunks, then swat them all over the basement. In summer we’d throw rubber duckies in the buckets.
She also had an evil streak. Whenever we’d need to go down to the basement to fetch something, we’d generally be able to navigate with little light, and if she was already down there she’d hide and then grab your leg when you walked by. When the dog scratched at the back door to come in, she’d find a hiding place somewhere along the dog’s joyful inbound trajectory, then leap out onto the dog’s face and scare the living crap out of it. She lived 20 years and was both cuddly and cantankerous.
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