The Snowshoe Cat is not as White as Snow!

Snowshoe cats are the perfect compromise: if you love Siamese cats but they're just 'too much', this might be the answer. This is a pedigree cat, but with an individualistic streak.

Snowshoe Siamese cats tend to be (and remember, I'm generalizing and there are plenty of exceptions!) more serene than their purebred cousins. They have a quieter voice, are natural performers, and get along beautifully with other animals.

These cats love people - they'll follow you around all day so if you're away a lot, this may not be the right cat for you. They'll want someone they can keep company.

The first snowshoe was produced in the 1960s in the United States when Dorothy Hinds-Daughters crossed a Siamese cat with a bicolour American short-hair. But it wasn't bred in the United Kingdom until 1986.

Unlike many other breeds, these cats don't all look alike when it comes to colour options. Breeders have been known to say that a litter of snowshoe kittens is as different as pebbles on a beach.

Most pedigreed cats, on the other hand, tend to look the same, so this is an unusual feature.

They do have some common features, though: because they have white socks, white on their faces, and white on their chest and tummy. They also come in all the usual Siamese colours, like seal point, chocolate point, blue point, lilac point...

Nor does this breed have the extreme modern appearance of the Siamese cat. However there is a new experimental breed called the Snowshoe Siamese which does have the body of the modern style. This new breed might take some tracking down and there is no guarantee that it will become popular and mainstream.

Breeding snowshoe cats is difficult - especially when it comes to getting those patches of white just right.

Owners agree on one thing: they're a great balance between sophisticate and fun-loving, almost as though they don't take themselves too seriously.

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