History of the Siamese and Snowshoe

Traditional Siamese

The Siamese breed has been around for a very long time. Over the years there has been 3 different styles. The first one is the traditional also known as applehead. This style is the closest look to the original Siamese. This style has a round faces, muscular, heavy bodies.

The second style is classic Siamese or old- fashioned. This style is the in between look of the modern and the traditional styles. This style generally has longer slimmer bodies than the appleheads. They also have more of a triangular faces when compared to the traditional/appleheads.

The last style is the modern or wedge heads that you see today. This style is long and thin all over, with long thin bodies, necks and tails and sharply triangular heads with large ears. They also have longer muzzles and a straighter nose than the two previous types of Siamese cats.

Snowshoe

This breed showed up in the 60s when a Siamese breeder, Dorothy Hinds-Daugherty, from Philadelphia, produced a litter of kittens. Three of the Siamese kittens had pure white mittens. As Hinds-Daugherty continued her work on the breed some of the kittens started to all have a white inverted “V” pattern on their nose and muzzle. This feature quickly became a favorite. The name Snowshoe comes from the white nose, which she said “looks like the kitties just played in some snow.” From there they have been known as Snowshoe. The Snowshoe resembles the traditional Siamese. They have a chunky body and white paws. Its coat pattern is a swirl of brown, black, and white. Their eyes are a beautiful icy blue. Although the inverted V is what every snowshoe breeder strive for, this pattern can be hard to produce. The reason why is because of the white spotted gene (Ws) it is very unpredictable with how much white is distributes.