‘Noisy, Despotic, Fascinating’: Siamese Cats and Emotional and Domestic Life in Twentieth-Century Britain

Abstract Siamese cats were introduced in Britain in the late nineteenth century and by the 1950s were one of the most popular pedigree cats. Their role in modern domestic life was increasingly celebrated in pet-themed memoirs and broadcasts. This article explores the social and emotional dimension of their rise – arguing that Siamese were particularly feted for their communicative capacities as well as their powerful albeit disruptive role in domestic life. In this article, we argue that pet animals, and the Siamese in particular, made a significant contribution to everyday domesticity and the emotional life of the home.

contribution to their owners' home lives which mattered the most. This contribution rested on characteristics that were held to be unique to the breed, especially the cats' ability to hold 'conversations' with their owners, and their ability to become entwined with the routines and rituals of domestic life. The perceived capacity of Siamese cats to respond and interact with their owners enhanced their emotional contribution to the pethuman relationship and left owners with a stronger sense of attachment to their pets. Some Siamese owners came to believe that their pets bridged the gap between humans and animals.
We argue here that human-animal relations were often an important, although overlooked, aspect of emotional and domestic life in the first half of the twentieth century. While the history of animals has played an increasingly important role in nineteenth-and twentieth-century British social and cultural history, such work has tended to focus on animals in wartime, public space, and, overwhelmingly, on dogs. 4 Animals in private domestic life, especially cats and smaller pets, have received less attention. 5 While pets have figured in recent histories, the focus is often upon their cultural significance rather than their social and emotional role within families and households. 6 The development of pet keeping during the nineteenth century has often been understood as part of a bourgeois civilising process. 7 The popularity of particular animals has been seen as emblematic of contemporary social and cultural hierarchies. 8 What is missing from these discussions is an understanding of the role of animals in everyday domestic life and a consideration of how the human-pet relationship developed in domestic space. The home and family have been increasingly acknowledged as an important historical terrain which shaped emotional experience. 9 The modern British domestic world has been recognised as a key site for emotional development, providing a focus for security and identity formation, as well as the establishment of attachments and family relationships. 10 But the presence and role of animals is seldom examined. 11 As Garry Marvin and Susan McHugh argue, human -animal relationships need to be seen as 'entangled' and animals themselves can be historical actors. 12 Following their approach, we argue that human attachments to animals could constitute an important aspect of everyday emotional life. This article explores the role of Siamese cats in human emotional and domestic life, examining the how some humans characterised their emotional relationships with their cats, the presence of the animals in everyday domestic routines and spaces, their interaction within human-family hierarchies, and how they helped their owners feel 'at home'.
The history of emotions has often been concerned with changing emotional norms, the rise of different models of fatherhood, for example, but expectations about emotional attachments between humans and animals have also been subject to historical fluctuation. 13 As our article will show, the first half of the twentieth century saw an increasing celebration of the relationship between cats and humans, and of the Siamese in particular. How far we can retrospectively understand the nature of this relationship is open to question. The emotional role of animals, their potential as emotional actors in their own right and their ability to exert agency, have been the subject of a lively discussion within animal studies. 14 Most scholars agree that it is problematic to assume conscious decision making on the part of animals, and that it may be more helpful to think in terms of 'practices' or 'behaviours' rather than agency. 15 The cat owners we discuss here attributed a high degree of intentionality to their pets and believed that they made conscious decisions. As such, Siamese cats appear to be particularly agentic animals. Yet, given the nature of the source material (cats leave no records of their feelings), it is ultimately impossible to determine the intentionality behind the behaviours of historic cats. However, it is worth noting that recent scientific research suggests that cats can deliberately use a range of different sounds to communicate with humans and that Siamese cats as a breed are particularly playful and demanding. 16 While the cat owners we discuss here consciously and playfully constructed the personas of their pets, these were rooted in real physical attributes and behaviours. In 1903 the breeder and advice writer Frances Simpson had observed the cats' 'unique tone of voice' and this remained a large part of their appeal. 17 This article inevitably focuses on the human construction of the relationship, but it is likely that the cats contributed to it in some degree. However, what is clear is that these cats inspired strong emotional attachment in the humans who wrote about them. The Siamese cat's success was partly due to its construction as a particularly expressive and emotional animal and to the potentially competing behavioural qualities it was attributed with, which were interpreted as loyaltyin comparison with other breeds and non-pedigree cats -and independence -in comparison with dogs.
The growing popularity of the Siamese cat can be mapped in twentieth-century British print and wider visual culture. The establishment of clubs and pedigree cat shows were reported in the press, both in newspapers and in magazines with an interest in breeding such as Country Life. These reports allow us to access the history of the organisations and individuals behind the rise in breeding and exhibiting Siamese, and to track their growth in popularity. Celebrity owners and their pets also appeared in more popular publications and, in the 1950s, the cats became well-known characters in Hollywood films. 18 The research for this article draws on a survey of press representations of pedigree cat shows and breeders and owners from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Many of these were illustrated with engravings and, later, photographs, and the visualisation of the cat in this way appears to have been important in popularising its novel physical features and to its success as a breed. However written and wireless broadcast depictions were at least as important and words allowed the animals' other characteristics to be communicated. We have also analysed longer writings about Siamese cats, including advice literature and popular published semi-fictional accounts of life with Siamese.
Animal autobiographies -either accounts 'by' animals or of life with them -had a long history in Britain and America. 19 Hilda Kean describes how the nineteenth century saw the emergence of this 'growing autobiographical genre', in which animals 'spoke' to the reader, and were portrayed as individuals with their own worth and feelings. 20 The era also saw the emergence of animal-centred memoirs. These have been described in literary studies as 'Animalographies', which included life writing 'by' animals but also those memoirs about animals where human subjectivity persists, 21 or 'animal autobiographical writing . . . which functions as a mode of self-construction' on the part of the human author. 22 Cat 'memoirs' formed a sub-section of the genre. From the early twentieth century, memoirs telling personal stories of Siamese cats and their owners began to appear and by the mid-century formed a popular category in their own right. Not counting articles, or advice literature, which was often also intensely personalised, we have identified around twenty British authors publishing one or more Siamese memoirs or stories based around them, often referencing each other's work or including contributions from others in the genre. Many of these were produced by the publishing house Michael Joseph Ltd., which specialised in animal stories, although other publishers were also active in this area. 23 Michael Joseph authored one of the first of these memoirs. They appear to have found an enthusiastic readership. The cat books of Doreen Tovey, for example, first published in the late 1950s, were reprinted many times and republished in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. 24 Working-class voices are noticeably absent from this literature and although there is some evidence that Siamese ownership crossed class boundaries, the voice that promoted the animals was predominantly middle-class. Certainly, the initial costs of obtaining a Siamese would have been a stretch for many working households. 25 As a result, this article focuses mainly on middle-class owners, although we do draw attention to complex representations of class which suggest a wider social reach in some cases. Writing about Siamese cats was often anthropomorphic and drew on a well-established literary tradition. 26 We will argue here that these cats were subject to an anthropomorphism that was often an expression of a profound emotional investment in which the perceived autonomy of the cats as well as their real behaviours and attributes played an important role.

'Found in every home from castle to cottage': the rise of the Siamese cat
Siamese cats were first exhibited as part of a wider trend in breeding and showing pedigree cats. As Kean has shown, cats in general were often seen in a negative light in the Victorian period, but became more popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 27 Harriet Ritvo demonstrates that it was difficult to establish a system of classification for cats, as they were less easy to distinguish between than dogs, and it was harder to create physical characteristics through breeding. She notes that the early popularity of the Siamese may have been in part due to its physical distinctiveness, as well as its 'foreigness' which allowed it to be marked out from native pedigrees. 28 The animals were exhibited at the first cat shows in the 1870s. They gradually played a larger role and were popular exhibits by the 1890s. 29 In 1893 the National Cat Club and Crystal Palace Cat Show had for the first time a special class 'for the Royal cat of Siam but one class only, and males, females, neuters, and kittens' were to be shown altogether. 30 The Siamese Cat Club was founded in 1901/2. 31 Its officials (at the time) were largely upper-middle-class and aristocratic women, a group which at this time were prominent as importers, owners and breeders. The Club established the 'points' or standards for the "'Royal' Siamese", which included: a light and even coat; the mask; ears, legs, feet and tail all dark and clearly defined; eyes 'a clear and decisive blue'; and a long and pointed head. These points were published shortly after in the fanciers' magazine Fur and Feather. 32 The Siamese also appeared in Frances Simpson's popular cat advice manual Cats for Pleasure and Profit in 1905, although she noted that the animals remained difficult to breed. 33 After World War One, when many abandoned breeding and shows were suspended, there was an upsurge in breeding and selling. 34 From 1924 the Siamese Cat Club held an annual show -which until the 1960s had 'selling classes' so that the public could take home kittens 35 -that saw a steady increase in exhibitors. The first manual devoted to the Siamese was published in Britain in 1934, 36 and in that year there were 509 entries at the Siamese Cat Club Show. 37 This rose to 573 in 1938, 38 the year after the Club's magazine Cats and Kittens was launched. After a break during the Second World War, in 1946 more than 8,000 pedigree Siamese were registered with the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy. 39 As Kit Wilson, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Council and Siamese Cat Club Committee member, put it in 1950, to own a Siamese when the Club was founded was like possessing 'a Corot or a Ming Vase. Today, the Siamese is found in every home from castle to cottage'. 40 This was doubtless an exaggeration but, although the upper and middle classes remained prominent as breeders and exhibitors, it is an indication that the class story had become increasingly more complicated as a wider range of people enjoyed the cats as pets. For example, May Eustace, breeder and Secretary of the Northern Counties Cat Club, who bred Siamese from the 1930s, looked down her nose at prospective working-class buyers who came to her home, and wrote scathingly about purchasers who disgarded pedigree names. 41 Yet she clearly had a wide social range of customers. Acquisition was undoubtedly influenced by social circle -the former Indian Army officer and Tory MP Sir John Smyth fell in love with Siamese after encountering one at a ritzy London cocktail party. 42 But Doreen Tovey, who lived in rural Somerset while working as a statistical librarian for Imperial Tobacco (who later became the best selling author of a series of Siamese cat books), first came across one in the home of a neighbouring farmer. 43 From the early days of their exhibition in Britain, Siamese cats were associated with the aristocracy and seen to carry a high social cachet. The Duchess of Bedford, a prominent cat fancier and at one time President of the National Cat Club, had from the 1890s played a key part in the early trend. 44 However, it was arguably also through less elite members of cat-fancying circles that the Siamese reached a wider audience. The Duchess gave Louis Wain, animal artist and President of the National Cat Club, a 'magnificent Siamese' called Bigit (which had eaten her 'splendid golden pheasant, worth £25'). 45 Harrison Weir was another animal artist, cat fancier and naturalist of relatively ordinary background who contributed to the rise of the Siamese. Known as the Father of the Cat Fancy, Weir was involved from the start with the Crystal Palace Cat Show, organised from 1871 by T. W. Wilson of the Crystal Palace Natural History Department. 46 Weir was joined as a judge by his brother, the naturalist John Jenner Weir, by the medic, journalist and cat-and-kennel expert, Dr Gordon Stables, and the early importer and breeder, Lady Dorothy Nevill. Charles Darwin was a patron of the show. 47 This was the first British cat show of a significant size. Weir wrote about the cats and their British importers and owners in his book of 1889, Our Cats and All About Them. 48 From the 1880s and 1890s commentators emphasised the exoticism and royal connections of the Siamese cat, and its origin story. In 1888 The Pall Mall Gazette noted how 'in Siam they are only to be had in the harem at the King's Palace, whence several of the specimens exhibited have been directly imported'. 49 From this point the 'royal origin story' of the Siamese was given greater attention in press commentary and a growing specialist literature aimed at cat breeders and owners. One of the key popularisers was Weir. As Eustace reflected in 1978, 'No other creature had so far captured the imagination of animal lovers. They clung tenaciously to Harrison Weir's description of Siamese cats as royal cats'. 50 Another was the writer, broadcaster and political activist Compton Mackenzie, 'who heard it said' that the cats were kept as 'repositories for the souls of transmigrating Siamese royalty'. 51 In 1924, Mackenzie's radio broadcast 'Siamese Cats and Some Islands', was credited with increasing attendance at the annual show of the Siamese Cat Club ten-fold, and Mackenzie himself was elected as president. 52 Another key figure in the popularisation of the Siamese was the publisher and writer (also a later President of the Siamese Cat Club) Michael Joseph. Joseph wrote a number of cat books including Cat's Company (1930) and Charles: The Story of a Friendship (1943), which detailed Joseph's nine-year relationship with his most prized cat, a Siamese named Charles (named after Charles O'Malley -the fictional Irish Dragoon). Charles was also broadcast by the BBC on the Saturday Home Service in August 1944. 53 The exoticism of the Siamese without doubt contributed to its popularity in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. The distinctive look of the animal and its special associations chimed with a wider pattern of orientalism in interwar culture that celebrated design and goods with an 'oriental' or 'Eastern' look, and a process of othering that helped construct the British sense of self. 54 The Siamese' association with the exotic and elite social status and its subsequent rise in popularity can be compared to the trajectory Cheang has identified for the Peke. 55 The idea of the Siamese as 'oriental' or 'other' was certainly present in owners' writings. 56 In most discussions, however, the animals' emotional and domestic roles were given greater prominence.
The prestige of the Siamese may also have been particularly attractive to female breeders, who began to dominate the world of showing and breeding from the early 1920s. During the nineteenth century organisations devoted to dog breeding were maledominated, and women made a considerable effort to insert themselves in these arenas towards the end of the century. 57 In contrast, the cat world, although initially at least partly male-driven, was later dominated by female public activity and enterprise. According to Eustace, Helen Winslow had in 1900 deplored the lack of female judges at cat shows; 58 by about 1920 men were in the minority as judges. 59 In the larger masculine world of animal breeding in which these women were attempting to assert themselves, the high status of the Siamese was a useful lever. Breeding also offered both pleasure and an opportunity for self fulfilment. Eustace's own entry into the 'profession' had come after her acquisition of a Siamese cat in the 1930s, and her need to find something to do in response to the 'chasm' left by her grown children. 60 Breeding allowed the exercise of power and autonomy, which must have had considerable appeal to middle-class housewives. According to the breeder Ann Codrington: 'One breeds Siamese because one loves them and because home is not the same without the sound of those thumping little feet -and because of the gamble. One uses one's skill to improve on nature, and one feels like a little god when sometimes the gamble comes off'. 61 While breeding and showing Siamese could be a means to achieve social power and a demonstration of status, many owners did not show and increasingly did not breed. Although advertised prices suggest it could be lucrative, the necessary space, cattery buildings and feed all required some outlay, and the failures to breed kittens which met the point requirements meant that it could be a precarious business. Especially in the early years, many cats and catteries succumbed to disease and infestations, which exhibitions and catteries helped to spread; the animals probably also suffered from inbreeding, as some breeders recognised. 62 Doreen Tovey tried to breed but found it economically unviable, and gave a good account of the difficulties involved. 63 In fact, most of the writers of Siamese memoirs we examine here said relatively little about breeding, beyond mentioning how they had come to acquire their kittens. They focussed instead on the difference that the cats made to their daily emotional and home lives.
'The most tremendous capacities for loving': the emotional qualities of the Siamese From the late nineteenth century, Siamese cats were noted for their emotional qualities and their apparent ability to become attached to humans was increasingly prized. Weir related how the importer Herbert Young's chocolate variety of the Royal Siamese cat was 'most loving and affectionate' -apparently one of the first mentions of the characteristic that was later to become an essential trait. Weir also turned to Mrs Vyvyan for her experience of the Siamese. Like Major Young's Siamese, Vyvyan found hers 'very affectionate and personally attached to their human friends, not liking to be left alone, and following us from room to room more after the manner of dogs than cats. They are devoted parents, the old father taking the greatest interest in the young ones'. 64 These qualities -good parenting, friendliness with dogs and capabilities as hunters -were picked up by articles and readers' correspondence in Country Life in the early 1900s. Contributions to the magazine chart the transition of the Siamese from its beginnings in what one correspondent called the 'craze for abnormal and strange pets', 65 to becoming part of the family by the Edwardian period. 66 Articles from the 1930s focused on the cats' ability to make friends with the family and their pets. One told of a Siamese on good terms with a West Highland Terrier and a monkey, to whom the cat 'was a real friend' 67 ; another related the friendship between the Countess of Wessex's rescue badger, her dogs and her Siamese cat. 68 During the inter-war period, commentary in the press and in pet manuals gave the Siamese a new emotional significance, suggesting that they had a special ability to form relationships with humans. This emphasis on emotional capacities was often expressed through a comparison to dogs. It was repeatedly stressed that Siamese were more canine than feline, especially in their attachment to people rather than to places. 69 An article in the Daily Mail in 1925 stated: 'Siamese cats . . . are dog-like in the way they follow about those to whom they are attached'. 70 According to The Times in 1928, they possessed 'the dog's fidelity and affection for mankind'. 71 Dogs had long been seen as the ultimate pet, eulogised as the animal with the most capacity to form relationships with man in the eighteenth century, its qualities of fidelity, loyalty and affection amplified and reinforced by the moral codes of Victorian culture. 72 So for a cat to be placed on almost equal terms to the dog was a cultural shift, and it may also be significant that there was a new emphasis on the special qualities of dogs in the 1920s. Although a series of Dogs' Protection bills was defeated up to 1934, there was popular support in the early twentieth century for a Dogs' Protection Act, which sought to exclude dogs from vivisection. 73 It is conceivable that this public sympathy might have reflected or encouraged a wider shift in attitudes to other companion animals including cats in the period -perhaps especially to Siamese, since, as noted, they were frequently characterised as more akin to dogs than to other cats.
Siamese cat owners and breeders, however, were less happy with the comparison with dogs, and argued that there were important distinctions between the ways in which the two animals interacted with humans. According to Rose Tenent, 'Anyone who has ever reared a Siamese kitten will tell you that its loyalty and devotion surpass those of any other domestic animal, even including dogs'. 74 Mackenzie also insisted that the cats had their own very distinctive character. 75 'The Siamese cat is', he said, 'just the pet that lots of people are wanting . . . it combines all that is best in cats and dogs . . . even more attractive to my mind is the personal devotion of the Siamese cat not to its master, but in what I think is a finer relationship, to its friend . . . '. 76 For Mackenzie the Siamese was superior because it was not automatically devoted to its master, but chose to be so. 77 The animal was thought capable of significant emotional attachment, and this was valued because the cat was believed to have exercised its own agency in relation to its owner. Discussions of Siamese kitten acquisition suggested that the decision had been made by the animals rather than their owners. This was the case for Charles and Michael Joseph. 78 In Tovey's narrative, she and her husband visited the home of a litter of Siamese kittens with the intention of viewing them rather than acquiring one (as the Seal Points they preferred had already been snapped up). Yet they were unable to resist the charms of Blue Point kitten Sugieh, who had apparently decided that they were there to take her home. 79 One of the most attractive qualities attributed to the animals was their apparent individuality. To John Smyth, for example, 'Siamese cats are the most truly individual animals of all'. 80 For Joseph, the key attraction of Charles was his sense of the cat as an individual being with a distinct personality. Unlike other Siamese cats, who were known to be 'pugnacious', Joseph prized Charles because 'he was a gentle cat'. 81 Owners writing about Siamese made a strong association between individuality and agency. Smyth writes: 'Despite her timorous nature, Pooni had a will of iron and insisted on keeping her complete independence'. 82 Tovey's depiction of Sugieh adopted a similar tone: 'She was the living example of an iron hand in a small, blue-pointed glove'. 83 The words 'demand' and 'demanding' were frequently used. According to Mackenzie, 'unless you are prepared to surrender to those demands it would be wiser not to keep a Siamese cat'. 84 Yet it was the very demanding nature of the Siamese, and what owners saw as the agency of the animal itself, which was believed to give it its capacity to love. As Irene Holdsworth wrote: 'Siamese have the most tremendous capacity for loving, and they not only ask, but they demand that they are given love in return'. 85 While anthropomorphic constructions of the Siamese are a testament to the emotional value humans placed on them, descriptions of the communicative abilities of the Siamese were based in part on real behaviours displayed by the animals. When writing about the problem of interpreting texts that give 'voice' to animals, Howell notes that although we must remain conscious that humans are speaking for animals, they are articulating nonhuman voices. Their construction is based on animals' physical traits. 86 This claim can also be made in relation to twentieth-century Siamese memoirs, and the startling range of noises that the cats produced, which came about through the animals' physical agency and were probably intended to be communicative. A striking feature of the narratives of almost all owners is their discussion of the Siamese 'voice'. John Smyth's Pooni had 'many different miaows', 87 Irene Holdsworth's Sascha 'a dozen different voices'. 88 These discussions raise the interesting prospect that the cats themselves contributed to the relationships, exercising agency of a sort.
What can be argued definitively, however, is that these perceived communicative capacities were crucial to the development of human attachments to these animals. 89 The discussion of the Siamese voice was, of course, in part, a consequence of the physical capacities of the animal -then, as now, the Siamese possessed a wider range of sounds than the ordinary cat. But it was invaluable to writers of memoirs about life with their Siamese cats since it literally gave the animals a voice. There was a shared idea that the sounds made by Siamese cats were essentially communicative, and even conversational. Joseph also writes: ' as a kitten Charles did not attain the full extent of his vocal powers but even so he made a great deal of noise, and he soon made it plain that he enjoyed conversation. When I spoke he answered; if I did not begin the conversation he would'. 90 Irene Holdsworth, writing about her pet Sascha, also notes: 'certainly and unmistakeably did she say "no" "why" "won't"'. 91 The strong emotional attachment of owners to their cats was portrayed as fundamentally linked to this communicative ability. Smyth comments: 'I would never have imagined that I could have been so completely captivated by an animal -but one which in fact was so nearly able to talk . . . ' 92 It was a belief that underpinned the rising number of memoirs of life with Siamese cats, and it also permeated many of the advice manuals on how to look after them. According to Eustace, 'The cat has, in many ways, the most highly developed personality and often understands in a most weird and startling way the meaning of what you say to it'. 93 She thought that the Siamese had 'a greater variety of vocal sounds . . . than any other animal', and that it was 'our stupidity' that prevented us from understanding them. 94

'His rightful Siamese role as ruler of the household': the Siamese in domestic life
The perceived ability of the animals to communicate, and to make their 'demands' felt, allowed the cats to play an increasingly complex role in the domestic lives of their owners. The impact of the cats on daily home life, and the extent to which their activities became intertwined with the routines of their owners, was an important theme in cat memoirs. These narratives were often centred around the home lives of writers. Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling have argued that being 'at home' is an emotional state, often linked to a feeling of comfort and security. 95 Since at least the mid-nineteenth century pet animals have been cast as playing an important role in the creation of comfortable domesticity. 96 Recent historical studies also suggest that they can play a role in family relationships, being perceived as members of the family and placed within family authority structures and hierarchies. 97 Siamese cats became a significant part of domestic life because they were perceived as peaceful and loving, but also because their lively and even destructive behaviours made their presence felt. As we have seen, Siamese cats were often portrayed as ruling the roost. New Siamese owner Viola Allen captured this in 1959, 'he has already taken his rightful Siamese role as ruler of the household'. 98 And yet, the cats were also perceived to be especially able to contribute to the emotional life of the home and to the formation of a congenial domesticity. Irene Holdsworth writes: 'Less and less do I understand people who are able to live without a cat. One's house or flat may be delightful, but unless there is a cat stretched out in limp contentment before the fire, that house can never be a home'. 99 Siamese cats were thought to be particularly alert to their owners' comings and goings, and owners often recalled the pleasures of being greeted by their pet on their return home. Michael Joseph routinely found Charles waiting for him on the landing after work: 'It was pleasant to find him waiting patiently on the stairs when I came home late'. 100 The Smyths meanwhile were sure that their Pooni was 'fey' and able to predict when they arrived home -she would be found waiting outside their lift when they stepped out. 101 Siamese cats seemed able to familiarise themselves with human routines, especially when it worked to their advantage. Holdsworth noted of her Mascherina that 'by some strange alchemy she seems to know when the milkman will arrive' -when she would be given the top of the milk in a saucer. 102 Cats were a frequent presence at meals and their participation in this ritual often went as far as actually sitting on the dining table.
Pooni and Tomkin regularly sat on the Smyths' breakfast table, despite Frances's disapproval. 103 Charles sat at Michael Joseph's side at the dinner table -'my wife has still not forgiven me'. 104 The Toveys found that Sugieh 'liked to drink milk, but only if she was allowed to drink it standing on the table, out of a jug'. 105 Compton MacKenzie's first Siamese cat, Sylvia, had familiarised herself with MacKenzie's formal dining rituals in his home on Herme in the early 1920s, to the extent that she was almost a dining-room fixture: '[she] always arrived in the dining-room when the parlour-maid brought in the fish or entrée. Then she would jump on the mahogany table and sit for the rest of the meal on a mat which was placed at my left-hand to spare her the discomfort of the bare board. She never moved from her mat until a dish of filberts appeared with dessert . . . ' 106 This was followed by a game of table football, using the nuts.
Cats and humans also developed daily rituals together, often centred around the bodies and personal spaces of favourite humans. The Siamese were frequently present in intimate, private spaces which would have been out of bounds for other humans -Charles was often with Joseph in the bathroom, and bathing in the Tovey household was a fraught process owing to Sugieh's habit of leaping into the water. 107 Despite some human resistance, Siamese cats also often shared their owners' beds. 108 Holdsworth describes Mascherina as 'sitting on the pillow while I undress and darting under the sheets as soon as I get into bed where she curls up under my shoulder'. 109 In upper middle-class households in the first half of the twentieth century, it was common for the man of the house to have a separate dressing room where he would dress in private. 110 Joseph explains that 'by domestic tradition I had a room of my own which served both as a dressing-room and a room in which to work. Charles had the freedom of this room and usually went to sleep when the sun shone on it'. 111 Charles was usually in the room when Joseph undressed and took advantage of the moment: 'He always liked to be with me when I undressed, and still hid himself when I took off shoes and socks so that he could make a lightening pounce on my bare feet before I had time to get them into slippers'. 112 In the morning, Charles was there when Joseph woke up, when he awaited the arrival of the breakfast tray and 'it was his privilege to be given a little milk in my saucer'. 113 In Joseph's memoir, Charles is granted unique access to his body and personal space in the family home. No other family member, even his wife Edna, was present in his private space in the same way.
Indeed, since the nineteenth century, pets were often imagined as family members and the interactive qualities of Siamese cats made them particularly likely to be cast in this light. While pets should not be seen as straightforward child substitutes, neither the Toveys or Smyths had children living with them when they acquired the cats -which certainly left more time to build relationships with the animals. They were often depicted as interacting with human-to-human relationships -both Tovey and Smyth suggest that their cats had different relationships with each partner, subtly reinforcing the gendered dynamics of the marriages. Tovey, for example, believed that Sugieh managed to secure a place in the couples' bedroom by playing on her husband's sense of masculine chivalry: 'he saw, as he was meant to, only that she looked small and pathetic lying there in the basket'. 114 Smyth in contrast suggests that his female Siamese, Pooni, preferred his wife Frances, while their male cat, Tomkin, was closer to him. 115 Meanwhile, Michael Joseph's Charles formed a very close bond with the writer despite joining an already full household which included many animals and a three-year old daughter -in a sense, the acquisition of Charles as a special pet for Joseph helped maintain the family equilibrium. When he married his wife Edna she 'tolerated' his cats while Joseph writes that 'on my side I cheerfully tolerated her dogs and birds'. 116 Pets were a comforting presence in personal space and could even become an essential part of working routines. Frances Smyth was Pooni's favourite and Frances's office became the cat's 'particular den'. 117 Charles meanwhile spent much time with Joseph in his study, the animal's tactile presence became part of Joseph's working practices: 'He learned the art of going to sleep on my knee when I was sitting in an armchair reading a manuscript and often allowed me to use him as a book rest'. 118 In a photograph in his book, Charles, the cat is shown snuggled close to Joseph as he writes, with the caption 'My desk was part of his domain' (See Figure 1). The photograph, which was probably staged in order to create an image for the book, shows Joseph and Charles in close physical proximity while he writes, with the cat's paws actually resting on the blotting paper. Mackenzie, who had a night-time writing routine, came to rely on the presence of his cat Sylvia: 'After dinner every night I setted down in the invalid chair in which I have had to write since 1913 to fend off the attacks of an acute sciatica. In this chair after my man had brought a pint of ale at eleven o'clock Sylvia used to lie beside me without moving until I went off to bed about four or five, when she accompanied me upstairs and got into bed with me'. 119 At this point in his life, Mackenzie was struggling with physical pain and was finding his novel The Altar Steps very difficult to write -the comforting presence of Sylvia was essential to him, and he credits her with helping him to finish the book: 'without the constant presence of the little cat beside me in my chair I believe I should have abandoned the task of finishing it in time for publication in 1922'. 120 Siamese cats were frequently described as having a powerful effect on the homes around them. Their needs often required considerable domestic adaptation and they could be destructive -but in the cat memoirs they were always redeemed through their ultimate contribution to the homeliness of the home. The Smyths, who lived on the eighth floor or a block of flats overlooking the Thames and Battersea Power Station, made a lot of changes to accommodate their cats. One of the delights of the flat had been the acquisition of a balcony where Frances had established a flower garden. The plants, however, were eaten by Pooni and the view was obscured by wire mesh, installed to prevent the cats from falling out. 121 To deal with the problem of the cats climbing out of open windows in hot weather, Frances 'had every window in the flat fitted with nylon curtains, fixed on brass bars at the top and bottom and pulled tight in between'. 122 To keep the cats safe inside, everyone was asked to take their shoes off to avoid treading on them, and 'no door was to be left open unless firmly stopped with weights '. 123 These alterations were irritating and expensive but we are left in no doubt that they were entirely worth it -for the 'joy and companionship' that the 'beloved cats' brought. 124 Tovey's narrative revels more overtly in the destructive nature of her Siamese, and the comedy of her book is derived from their antics. Numerous human social occasions descended into 'Bedlam' thanks to warring and mating Siamese. 125 After a few years the Tovey domestic interior -with broken ornaments, battered furniture and numerous stains -bore witness to the feline presence: 'wherever we looked we were surrounded by evidence of our decline and fall'. 126 Yet despite it all, the cats had become fundamental to the Toveys' sense of home: 'it is impossible to imagine the cottage now without Siamese cats'. 127 Despite the domestic disruption, noise and mess that Siamese cats created, ultimately their presence contributed to the homeliness of the home, and to the tranquillity of their human companions. Joseph writes of how Charles' presence brought a sense of calm and peace. ' I liked to have him with me for he always knew when I wanted to be quiet; and there is something very tranquil and soothing about a sleeping cat. No human being can extinguish his presence as a cat does'. 128 For Irene Holdsworth, her Siamese became a hugely important emotional presence, raising her spirits when she was down and physically soothing her when she was angry or troubled by crawling onto her chest: 'And that is yet another lovely quality of the cat -this sense of peace and unlimited time they seem to create around them'. 129 On November evenings, she enjoyed staying in far more than going out, describing the following scene of cosy domesticity: 'The utter peace and content of a room where the bright fire burns and crackles in the grate, the curtains are drawn, one or perhaps two lamps are lit, and a contented cat sleeps stretched out on one's knee or curled up on its cushion, really bringing to life the meaning of the word "home"'. 130

Conclusion -bridging the divide between the human and animal world
Siamese owners often believed that their pets' individuality, agency and 'speech' created a bridge between the human and animal worlds. Irene Holdsworth's first cat, Sascha, who had died early, was the epitome of the ideal human-animal relationship: 'never have I known a cat more faithful, and altogether more loving than my first Siamese . . . '. 131 And Joseph too, in his relationship with Charles, came near, he believed, to bridging the world between humans and animals: 'With him I came nearer than I ever have been, or ever shall be, to bridging the gulf which divides us from the so-called dumb animals. Many of my happiest hours were spent in his company, for there was communion between us. He tried, as I did, to bridge the gulf; and I do not think I deceive myself if I say that there were times when we came very near to it'. 132 Not only did these owners become very attached to their cats, but they believed that their pets had enough emotional agency to be able to return their regard on some level. While it is impossible to determine how far these relationships were reciprocal, these beliefs were rooted in an appreciation of the behaviours and attributes of the cats. What can be argued definitively, however, is that these perceived qualities were fundamental to the attachments that humans formed to the cats, and to perceptions of the animal's ability to become enmeshed in the emotional ecologies of households and families. The belief that Siamese could form attachments, communicate, and almost to hold conversations with owners played an important role in the creation of these special human-animal relationships. These qualities enabled the animals to become embedded in human emotional and domestic life -through their interaction with daily routines and family relationships, their entry into private personal space and their intimate and tactile relationships with human bodies. The anthropomorphisation of the Siamese -and the emphasis on the animals' speech -reflected a new emotional understanding of the animal. Mackenzie writes: 'But what are their faults compared with their virtues -with their sense of humour, their fidelity, their playfulness . . . their conversational powers . . . their awareness of themselves . . . their love of people rather than place, their honesty (by which I mean they'll take a lobster off the table in front of you), their continuous passionate interest in all that is going on around them'. 133 For the Toveys, the cats were the centre of their domestic life: 'Even though they had wrecked the house and shattered our nerves, there was nothing we would have liked more than to go on raising noisy, despotic, fascinating Siamese forever'. 134 While the writers of the cat memoirs explored in this article represent a handful of pet owners drawn mainly from an elite group of professional writers and cat specialists, the popularity of their writings and the fact that Siamese stories were broadcast on the wireless suggests a public acceptance of and appetite for narratives that communicated a shared idea of emotionally intense pet ownership that had the power to transform domestic life. While writings about the Siamese stand out in their emphasis on the unique communicative qualities of the breed, other books about cats also emphasised their tactile presence and their deep embeddness in emotional life. 135 The Siamese breed stands out in the degree to which it was celebrated -and the emphasis owners placed on its 'voice' or ability to 'converse'. Yet in a sense the new emotional expectations around the Siamese cat may have been the tip of a feline iceberg. Diaries and other personal records also show that the emotional investment in cats went beyond literary tropes. 136 By the middle of the twentieth century they were one of Britain's most popular pets (along with birds and dogs) -in 1963 a Reader's Digest Poll suggested that 20 percent of British households had at least one cat. 137 Of course, alongside such invested relationships, cats continued to be exploited, abused or met with simple indifference. A 1973 marketing survey for new forms of cat-food packaging identified three different types of cat owner: 'cossesters', 'accepters' and 'resenters'. 138 The writers discussed in this piece fell into the first category. Nonetheless, their writings represent a real and important emotional experience that would have been shared by millions of cats and humans across the twentieth century.
Notes or, Thereby Hang two Tails (London, 1972) were among the illustrated books by writers and artists about Siamese cats in the family which appealed to both children and adults. 24. The first book in the series, Cats in the Belfry (