Grooming Siamese, Burmese and Oriental Cats

A Siamese, an Oriental Shorthair and a Burmese, fine close coats over a lean frame

What these breeds have in common

The oriental breeds are the fine boned, lean, elegant cats: Siamese, Oriental Shorthairs, Burmese, Tonkinese, Balinese, Javanese and the Singapura.

The coat on most of them is about as low maintenance as a cat coat gets. It is short, fine, close lying, with very little undercoat, and it sheds modestly and does not mat. A weekly stroke over with a grooming glove is genuinely sufficient for a Siamese.

What makes this group worth its own page is the body underneath rather than the coat. These are cats with very little body fat, thin skin and a high metabolism, and that changes how a bath, a dryer or a clipper should be handled.

What this group means for grooming

Fine close coats over a lean frame. Very little brushing, but thin skin and low body fat make clipper work and bath temperature matter.

What actually decides the grooming

The coat type, not the group. It sets the tools, the interval and the price, and two dogs in this group can need completely different appointments.

A very small amount of coat work

There is not much to say about maintaining these coats, and saying so is more useful than padding it out.

A rubber grooming glove or a soft bristle brush once a week, worked along the way the coat lies, removes what is loose and spreads the skin oils that give the coat its characteristic sheen. A fine comb occasionally to check the skin. That is the routine.

These breeds are also among the most tolerant of handling in cats, which makes nails, ears and teeth genuinely manageable at home if you start early. Dental disease is disproportionately common in Siamese and Oriental Shorthairs, so brushing teeth is a better use of five minutes than brushing coat.

The Cornish Rex-like fineness of the coat means it can be broken by aggressive brushing, so a soft tool is the right one. Nothing here needs a slicker.

Thin skin, low body fat and temperature

An oriental cat has a lean frame with very little insulating fat and a coat too thin to hold much warmth. That has practical consequences the moment the cat gets wet, and it is the main thing a groomer needs to know about the group.

Bath water should be comfortably warm and checked properly rather than judged, because there is little coat between the water and the skin and the temperature is felt directly. The room should be warm too. A wet Siamese gets cold fast and shivers in conditions a Persian would be fine in.

Drying happens promptly and thoroughly for the same reason, on a low heat setting rather than a hot one.

Clipper work, if there is ever any reason for it, needs care. Thin skin over prominent bone means less margin between the blade and the skin, particularly along the spine, the hips and the shoulder blades where there is almost nothing in between. There is rarely any reason to clip these cats at all, but the sanitary area and the odd mat on a Balinese come up.

The longhaired members of the group

The Balinese and the Javanese are the longhaired versions of the Siamese and the Oriental Shorthair, and they are frequently described as needing no more work than their short coated relatives. That is nearly true and worth qualifying.

They carry a long, fine, silky coat with essentially no undercoat, and the absence of undercoat is the reason they are so much easier than a Persian: most matting in a longhaired cat happens in the undercoat, and there is barely any here. The coat lies flat, it does not fluff, and it rarely felts.

What it does do is tangle in the usual places if it is left indefinitely, particularly the tail plume, the ruff and behind the ears. A comb through once a week, taking those three areas specifically, keeps a Balinese in good order permanently.

They shed less noticeably than a shorthair too, since long fine hairs are less prone to weaving themselves into fabric. If you like the oriental temperament and want a long coat without the Persian commitment, this is where that combination lives.