The modern Siamese is very different to the traditional Siamese. You can see the "oriental" body conformation (slender) of this cat breed in the excellent Helmi Flick photograph above, which gives an impression of the active Siamese. In fact there are a whole range of Siamese cat body shapes. The middle ground is occupied by the Thai, a new cat breed but which for me is simply a newish version of the Siamese. It is a bit confusing for people outside the cat fancy. TICA's breed standard is different to that of the CFA. Both recognize the slender, contemporary Siamese as the breed (and simply ignore the more popular traditional cat) but TICA allows a much wider range of pointing colors and patterns while the more conventional CFA accept: seal, chocolate, blue and lilac pointing. The more modern types of pointing are lynx pointing (tabby) and other versions of broken pointing such as tortie and shaded pointing. Read more...and about the history of this cat..