Siamese Grooming

About the Siamese

A Siamese has about the lowest maintenance coat of any cat. It is very short, fine and close lying, with almost no undercoat behind it, and it sheds modestly and does not mat. A grooming glove once a week is genuinely the whole coat routine, and saying that plainly is more useful than padding it out.

What makes the breed worth its own page is the body underneath. A Siamese is a lean, fine boned, long limbed cat with very little insulating fat and a coat too thin to hold much warmth. That changes how a bath, a dryer or a clipper should be handled, and it is the thing a groomer who mostly works with plush cats can get wrong.

The other thing worth knowing is that the coat changes color over the cat's life, and that is normal.

A very small amount of coat work

There is not much here, and that is the honest answer rather than a gap in the page.

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

That is the routine. No clipping, no dematting, no bathing except when something has got onto the coat.

One caution: the coat is fine enough that aggressive brushing breaks it, so a slicker is the wrong tool. Soft only.

Because there is so little to do with the coat, the useful five minutes go elsewhere. Siamese and Oriental Shorthairs have a disproportionately high rate of dental disease, so brushing teeth is a better use of the time than brushing hair, and it is the single most valuable habit to build with this breed.

Thin skin, low body fat and temperature

This is the part a groomer needs to know and it is the reason the breed has its own page rather than a line on the oriental cats hub.

A Siamese has a lean frame with very little insulating fat and a coat too thin to hold warmth. The moment it gets wet, it gets cold, in conditions where a Persian or a British Shorthair would be perfectly comfortable.

Bath water should be comfortably warm and checked properly rather than judged by hand, because there is almost no coat between the water and the skin and the temperature is felt directly. The room should be warm too, and drying should happen promptly on a low heat setting rather than a hot one.

Clipper work, on the rare occasions there is any reason for it, needs care. Thin skin over prominent bone means very little margin between blade and skin, particularly along the spine, the hips and the shoulder blades. There is seldom any reason to clip a Siamese at all beyond a sanitary trim.

The same lean build is why these cats seek out warm spots so determinedly, and why a Siamese will get under a blanket when other cats will not.

The points darken with age, and that is normal

Siamese coloring is temperature dependent, which is a genuinely unusual fact and one that produces a lot of unnecessary worry.

The gene responsible produces pigment only below a certain temperature, which is why the coldest parts of the cat carry the color: the face, ears, paws and tail. Kittens are born almost white because the womb is uniformly warm, and the points develop over the first weeks and months.

It also means the coat responds to temperature for the rest of the cat's life. A Siamese living somewhere cold generally darkens overall. An older cat darkens as circulation changes. And most usefully for a grooming page: hair that regrows over a shaved patch frequently comes back dark, because the skin there was cooler while it healed. That is why a Siamese who has had a patch clipped for surgery or a blood sample often grows a dark patch back, and it is entirely normal. It usually fades over subsequent coat cycles.

None of this needs treating. It is worth knowing so that a dark patch after a veterinary visit does not become a worry.

What moves the price

Almost nothing about the coat, and most Siamese owners never book a groomer at all, which is a reasonable choice.

The cost, when there is one, is about handling and availability rather than work. Cat grooming is a smaller specialism, and a cat that objects is priced for the time.

Siamese are, on the whole, among the more tolerant cats for handling, and they are also among the most vocal about it, which are not the same thing. A groomer will not mistake noise for distress but it does make for a loud appointment.

Nail clipping and a bath when genuinely needed are the only real services, and both are quick.

What to tell your groomer

Say the breed, because the temperature point is not obvious and it genuinely matters. A groomer used to plush coated cats may not think about how quickly a lean, fine coated cat gets cold once wet.

Ask about water temperature and room temperature, and about drying on a low setting.

Ask them to use a soft tool rather than a slicker. This coat breaks.

Mention the teeth, and ask them to look. Dental disease is disproportionately common in the breed and groomers see mouths regularly.

And if a patch has been clipped for any veterinary reason, expect it to grow back darker and do not be alarmed by it.

Keeping the coat between grooms

Common Questions About the Siamese