Applehead Siamese cats

Applehead Siamese cats, as their name suggests, have rounded faces like apples!

They also have bigger, heavier bodies than today's ultra-lean and svelte Wedgehead show cat.

Appleheads came about after years of selective breeding during which Siamese breeders strove to produce a longer, thinner, more extreme-wedge look in their show cats.

This caused an enormous amount of concern, and a move was started by some American breeders to try and return the breed to the look of the early cats that came from Siam (Thailand) to the West, sometime in the 1880s.

These original Thai cats had smaller ears, less angular faces, bigger bones and rounder, more muscular bodies than those found in today's show winners, which are very long, lean, and angular.

In order to achieve the round Applehead look, breeders may have crossed their Siamese with other breeds with shorter, rounder faces, for example, the American or British Shorthair varieties.

Armit, an early Thai cat, in 1890
photo : Wikimedia Commons

It's possible that today's Applehead Siamese cats are not, in fact, totally similar to those early Thai cats ... attempts to create a cat whose looks were more in keeping with those original Siamese may actually have gone too far, and many Applehead faces may now be too round.

This is because it's likely that the cats in those early pictures were un-neutered males. Stud cats tend to be heavier than neuters, and they also have a tendency to develop jowls, making them look round-faced, whereas in fact their faces (without the jowls) were probably more of a moderate wedge shape.

A Traditional Siamese cat today
photo: © Chantel Hurlow | Creative Commons


But, from the two pictures above, you can see that the look is very similar.

The Applehead is also known as the 'traditional' Siamese cat

The terms traditional Siamese or 'Applehead' are used mainly in the United States, and indeed the use of the term 'traditional' to describe the Applehead cat was first proposed and copyrighted by the Traditional Cat Association, Inc.

British breeders don't generally use the term Applehead, preferring instead to use 'old-style' (which can also be used to describe the Classic shape – a more moderate body-type which is different to, and rather smaller than, the Applehead. You can see how complicated it gets!)

I always think of the old-style or Classic shape as falling somewhere between the Applehead and the Modern or Extreme-Wedge show type of cat.

Applehead Siamese cats are extremely beautiful, with all the personality, intelligence and loving nature for which the breed is known.

More about the different body types:

• The Classic or Old-Style Body Type
• The Modern Body Type
• Siamese Cat Characteristics

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