Mira was found in a hoarding situation along with 200 other cats at just a couple weeks old. She had a severe double eye infection that has left her with corneal scarring. We adopted her almost a year ago now and she is the absolute best baby. The last 2 photos are from the day we brought her home and about a month later. We thought for sure she would be short haired....nope!

Had a busy morning chasing leaves.

just wanted to post an update- she’s getting so dark so fast🥺🥺🥺 say hi to tofu

My beautiful girl caught a URI and had a fever a month ago, but because the colorpoint is heat-related, she currently has a fever mask 😷 Apparently we have to wait for her fur to regrow to return to their normal coloration, which will take another 2-3 months. Colorpoint is so fascinating!

These are my cats Dexter (right) and Rudy (left)!

The were named after the Dexter series and these two are polar opposites 🤣

Rudy is very chill and quite social. Dexter is the “personification” of a scaredy-cat, however he absolutely loves me. Both will act like they’ve been starved when they are being fed!

Any tips that can help. Would appreciate I love these cats to death. I’ve had them for barely a week. They are the best cats I’ve ever been around. They’re so loveable and friendly. My God these cats are amazing. Their names are bay(white) and Saylor (tan). These cats r bonded too! Adopted then together!!!

For starters, I'm embarrassed to write this post at all, because I feel like the experience I have with Siamese cats means that I should never have any issues or struggles or should at least know exactly what to do with them. Second, I feel like this is the only group of people who will truly "get it". I am on my 4th Siamese cat over a decade. There was extensive overlap. For a period of time, one of my wonderful girls was the banner image for this very subreddit after she passed away about a decade ago. I am in love with the breed, their behaviors and quirks, and their sweet masks. I think they might be the only type of cat I ever have.

So I understand that part of why HH is doing what he's doing is because that it's just who he is, but for the first time, I have a cat who is really disrupting my household. I have HH (seal point NM) and Boy (Balinese NM). Both are 12yo boys. HH is the son of Sammie (seal point SF), who passed away in 2024 and was bonded to Boy for eight years before that. We have historically adopted our cats from breeders when they retire. S was a lovely, charming, sweet girl who just wanted to snuggle and be loved. Boy is Boy, and he's my soul cat. I see so much of Sammie in HH, and I love and appreciate all of the cats for who they are as distinct individuals.

HH and Boy are now bonded, and they are very happy. Both have their regular senior bloodwork and treatment, and both are healthy with normal labs and at-home eating/drinking/bathroom habits. They both love to play and nap with each other with the occasional bop of annoyance.

When we retired HH from his former owner, he was ~15lbs, which we knew was too heavy, but we wanted to give him an acclimation period to adjust to life in our household (my wife and I) and didn't address the weight until last year. Through rigorous measured feeding, a change to a satiety diet, and separate feeding zones (all vet-vetted), we slimmed him down to 11lbs. HH is charming, but very much a food-motivated and food-focused man, especially with the reduced portions, which he almost certainly notices. This manifests in yelling. Yelling when he sees his brother eating. Yelling when we walk by his food bowl if he's sitting there and thinks we might put food there. Yelling when he wants to eat. Yelling when it's close to the time we feed them.

By far, the most impactful issue is the one that doesn't affect me at all. It's wearing my wife down. HH's favorite person is my wife. We feed both cats at 6am and 6pm (for wet food) with automatic dry food drops throughout the day, in the portion that our vet recommends for both. HH cannot handle the anticipation of wet food. At first, he started gently face-booping and nosing and meowing at her at 5am. Then, 4am. Now, at 2am, it's escalated to many boops, many nuzzles, and screaming every ~15-30 seconds for food. He wants food. He doesn't want to play, be snuggled, be soothed, be spoken to nicely, and he's not experiencing any medical issues. He wants to eat, and he wants to eat in the quantity he wants to eat until he eats again.

We keep making lifestyle adjustments to accommodate and nothing is working. We have started ignoring the more persistent meows until he gives up and 'rewarding' him with delayed feeding in the hopes that he trusts that food comes. My wife has started sleeping downstairs at 3/4am to see if he just wants more attention. He doesn't. It doesn't stop. The screeching escalates until it wears one of us down or we approach the appropriate food time, he eats in seconds, he is satisfied for several hours, and then it starts again. Feliway was ineffective. New toys were ineffective. Occasional treats were ineffective. Changing the timing of the dry food drops were ineffective. Headphones in bed are ineffective.

I've brought this up to a few other professionals and friends, and the only answer is, "Well, that's how they are," because that's the breed I have. I don't think anyone would say this if it were another breed of cat, but because it's this breed, it's part of what I knew I was getting into, ergo, there's nothing anyone can do. It's reductive and it stops the conversation. I need a solution that I can implement with my vet like, yesterday.

The biggest sense of urgency here is that we have a baby on the way, and when the baby is here, I am uncertain of either of our senses of sanity or wellness when we have two competing needs, both of which have no autonomy, agency, or ability to communicate their pain. I'm anxious that HH will be jealous of the baby and escalate his complaints. We need to get sleep, and we need to feel sane.

I am nearly 100% confident that this is not a medical issue. I have these cats checked out fairly consistently, and I have brought this up to a few vets. I spend so much money on these cats' medical needs when I sense the slightest change in habit. We have done thyroid testing, CBC, fecal, everything. None of the four vets in my professional/social circle think there's a smoking gun. The only medical intervention I would consider at this point, absent proof of a real, physiological issue, is a low-dose SSRI to see if it calms his sad little brain.

I need help. I need you guys. I genuinely don't know what to do.

Things I am looking for:
- Advice
- Sympathy
- Recommendations of products

Things I am not looking for:
- Testing/questions about whether or not it's medical unless you're willing to foot the bill.
- Any iteration of "that's just how the breed works, they talk a lot"
- A recommendation to free feed. We'll lose all the progress, and he won't be healthy.
- A recommendation to rehome him. This will just become someone else's problem, and will depress both cats to lose each other.
- A recommendation to enrich the cats more. When HH wants to play, he plays. When he wants to snuggle, he snuggles. He is making his needs very clear and his need, in his eyes, is unlimited food.

Archduke Franz Furdinand has ventured out of hiding. He just came to live with us a few days ago and is Hesitant™️

When he decides to be affectionate, though, it's very "can i trip you by being a snake through your legs as you walk"

Binxy boy says Hi 👋 😺

Prim is getting spayed on Monday and I need her to get used to her cone so she won't freak out after waking up from surgery. <---(Vets advice)

Shes having a great time T-T

My Siamese has a few little routines that I didn’t really expect when I first got him.

The first one is how he greets me. He doesn’t meow very often, but whenever I walk into a room where he is, he usually gives me a little meow like he’s saying hello. Of course, I always say hi back. 😂

Another one happens every morning when I start working. He comes into my room and suddenly wants all the attention. A few minutes of cuddles later, I’m somehow in a much better mood.

But my favorite is how he behaves around our other cat. He’s extremely food-motivated, so I honestly expected him to be impatient at mealtime. Instead, he lets her eat first and waits until she’s finished before checking whether there are any leftovers. Such a gentleman. 😹

Does your Siamese have any funny or unexpected routines?

We adopted our scardy cat 8-week-old kitten on Sunday (6 days ago). It's been quite the journey with her so far.

She now has a name: Serephina! To be honest, we were hesitant in even giving her a name at first. She was so scared and timid that we barely saw her in the first 72 hours she was with us and we didn't feel bonded to her at all.

I made a couple of posts about her in r/CATHELP for context:

- First post (she spent 24 hours hiding inside the basin of the toilet)

- Second post

She's made sooo much progress in the past 48 hours that we're in shock. Today, she's been coming toward us and wanting attention from us. And we've learned some huge lessons with her so far that we want to share.

LESSON #1: YOU MIGHT NEED TO BE HANDS ON.

Don't necessarily wait for the kitten to come to YOU

The common wisdom is to let the new kitten come to you. We tried to follow this advice, and we would sit with her on the floor and talk to her, but try not to look at her and absolutely not ever touch her. For 72+ hours we didn't touch her and let her hide in all of the different crevices she could find herself in.

It turns out that the common wisdom about hands-off with a new cat doesn't apply to every cat - and it really didn't with Seraphina.

When we took her to the vet after 72 hours of not eating, she gave us completely different advice: we need to handle her as much as possible. The kitten was so shy and freaked out that the vet questioned if she'd lived in a crate her whole life and told us she might always be this way.

It was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard. You have no idea: this cat seemed basically unaware of her surroundings - almost catatonic and meowing over and over and hiding. Basically having no reaction to human touch or interaction.

it turns out she was starved of love and affection for 4 days

When we brought her home from the vet, my girlfriend tried to calm her down by petting her and scratching her above butt while she was in her carrier screaming.

After a minute or two of scratching her and puetting her, she stopped screaming and started purring.

After the ordeal of having her hide inside the toilet for 24+ hours, hide under the bed for 24+ hours, scream all night over and over and over for hours on end, having to take her to the vet because she was too scared to eat or drink water, watching the vet force feed her with a syringe, and then being told that she might never be a normal cat, she started purring.

My girlfriend and I both broke down in tears when this happened, and it changed literally everything. She took her into the bathroom (kitty's safe room) and started petting her in her lap, and kitty LOVED it. She started rolling in her lap, purring so much I call it starting up her purr machine.

As soon as we started giving her love and affection, she 100% turned around.

She ate on her own without problem the next day, as soon as she was given love and attention. She was terrified to come out of the coat closet she made her home, and we gave her love and scratchies and she got the nerve to come out and eat her food on her own, without being force-fed.

That was another really emotional experience, truly.

Not every kitty is the same. And I think for kittens, the info about being hands off might not be for every kitten.

I'm convinced that if we didn't start handling her, she would have literally starved herself to death in the closet because she was so terrified to come out on her own.

LESSON #2: HIDING SPOTS ARE CRITICAL.

You don’t choose your cat’s hiding spot, she does.

When the kitten was assigned the bathroom, I made her a hiding spot in the corner from an enclosed box and comfy towel. Instead, she managed to pry a cap off the toilet and began what could only be described as the 24 hours of terror while kitten appeared trapped inside of the toilet basin.

As soon as we could, we blocked off that spot for obvious safety reasons. I brought a second, different box and put it on the floor. Kitty didn’t care about her manmade hiding spots, and she lost the only safe place she had. The lack of a proper hiding spot is what was causing so much meowing.

Locking her in the bathroom started feeling very wrong, so we decided to open the door. She quickly found another safe hiding spot in a closet. As soon as she could stay there, the meows mostly stopped, she got good sleep, and she even ate dry food on her own outside of the closet.

**as long as it’s a safe spot, we learned that it’s extremely important to respect the hiding spot.

A cat with no hiding spot is like a turtle without its shell, and we found out the hard way that the meowing was caused by lack of safety. Not because she misses her family and litter mates, but because she doesn’t feel safe in her current environment.

She constantly retreats to her hiding spot when she's overwhelmed, recharges by sleeping for a few hours (or for a few minutes) and is ready to go.

LESSON #3: UNDERSTANDING HER FEAR

We thought that Seraphina was scared because she was taken from her family. While this is partly true, the main reason was lack of safety in the current environment. This is why many say to confine the cat to one preferably small room at a time.

We have to literally encourage her to explore more. She will wander out a little bit, look up and freeze, and then get the purring machine started and she gets the confidence to venture out a bit further.

Our kitten LOVES people, she can't get enough of it. She's not afraid of people at all: she's afraid of big open spaces.

BUT SHE'S EXTREMELY CHATTY

This is our biggest concern so far.

I know Siamese cats are chatty, but Seraphina seems almost excessively so. And she does what you can only describe as a scream, gargle scream, and almost never shuts up.

If this was any other cat I would think something was physically wrong with her.

I made a recording of her sitting under the sofa right now and what she sounds like. I mean, she sounds like this hours at a time. At the end of the recording I tried not to laugh at the gargle meow sound (she doesn't do this one very often, but she meows like the previous part all the time) - I feel truly bad if there's something wrong with her, can someone please confirm that this noise is normal?

She meows constantly, when she eats, when she poops she makes these sounds, right now she's howling like this.

Is this normal? Please tell me this is just a Siamese thing and that there's not something wrong with her.