Siamese Cat Gifts: Wedge Head, Sharp Points

Prices and lead times checked October 2026.

Yes, we stitch cats. Worth putting first, because a pet portrait studio is usually assumed to mean dogs, and plenty of cat owners never get as far as asking. We stitch dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, hamsters, birds and reptiles, and going by our own order book, Siamese are among the cats we are asked for most often.

They are also one of the most frequently mis-drawn cats in the gift trade, and not for the reason you would guess. The colouring is easy enough to approximate. What generic designs lose is the architecture: the long straight wedge of the head, the ears that look a size too big for it, and the fact that on this coat every boundary between pale and dark is a line rather than a fade. This guide is about those three things, and about the photo that lets us see them.

Why is the head the first thing to get right on a Siamese?

Compare it with the other end of the cat world. A British Shorthair, which we have written about separately in British Shorthair gifts, is a sphere with a face on it: round skull, heavy cheeks, short nose, small rounded ears. Nearly everything that makes that cat recognisable is a curve. Nearly everything that makes a Siamese recognisable is a straight line. Those are not two variations on one subject. They are opposite drawing problems, and a design built for one will be wrong for the other.

The ears deserve their own sentence, because their size catches people out. On a Siamese they are genuinely large relative to the head, wide at the base, and set so they look like a continuation of the wedge rather than two shapes placed on a roof. Shrink them even slightly and the cat stops looking Siamese and starts looking like a generic brown and cream moggie. Owners cannot always say what is wrong with a design, but ears that are too small is very often the answer.

The practical consequence for a portrait is that the outline carries an unusual amount of weight. Before any colour goes in, the silhouette has to be angular, with a clean straight run from the ear tip down the side of the face to the muzzle. If that run is soft or slightly convex, no amount of careful work inside the shape will fix it.

What does a coat with no undercoat do to the design?

A Siamese coat is short, fine and close-lying, and it has no undercoat beneath it. That one structural fact drives most of what follows.

First, it means there is almost nothing to texture. The fur lies flat against the body rather than standing away from it, so across the back, flank and shoulder the pale coat reads as a smooth, even wash of a single warm colour. There are no tufts, no clumps, no ruff and no direction in the fur for a design to use. If you have read our tabby cat gifts guide you will know a patterned coat gives a portrait plenty to hold onto. A Siamese body gives it very little.

Second, and this is the part that matters most, it means the boundaries are crisp. On a long haired or double coated cat, the place where one colour meets another is blurred by fur standing up and mixing the two. Without an undercoat to soften them, a Siamese's colour changes stay tight and defined. The dark of the mask stops where it stops. The dark of a foreleg stops in a fairly clean ring rather than a woolly gradient.

So the detail budget shifts. On most coats, the work is spread across the body. On a Siamese, the body takes very little and the edges take nearly all of it, because the edges are the only places where anything is happening.

For a sense of scale, at least six thread shades go into one golden retriever coat, and the same for a blue British Shorthair, both figures from our own studio practice. Neither of those cases looks like this one. A golden spends its shades on gradation across the whole body, and a blue British Shorthair spends them finding depth in a flat field. A Siamese spends almost all of them in narrow bands where pale meets dark.

Where exactly does a Siamese portrait live or die?

Take the mask first. On a Siamese it is not a solid dark oval. It covers the muzzle and the area around the eyes, it reaches up between the eyes and over the bridge of the nose, and it usually connects back towards the ears across the cheeks. How far it extends, how high it climbs on the forehead and how much pale face is left above it varies between individual cats, and it is one of the main reasons two seal point Siamese do not look alike.

Then the legs. The dark on a foreleg typically stops somewhere between the wrist and the elbow, and where it stops is specific to the cat. It is the detail most often simplified into a sock in off the shelf designs, and the owner notices because they have looked at those legs every day for years.

Then the ears. The dark of the ear usually runs down to meet the pale head, and the exact height of that join changes the proportions of the whole face. Set it too low and the head looks short. Set it too high and the ears look stuck on.

This is the honest reason to work from a photograph of the actual cat rather than from an idea of the breed. Those four borders are the fingerprint, and they are the one part of a Siamese that no generic design can get right by luck.

Do the eyes read differently on a dark mask?

Round the eye off and the cat loses its expression instantly. The almond outline and the upward tilt towards the ears are structural, part of the same angular scheme as the wedge and the big ears, and they are what give a Siamese that level, slightly appraising look. A round eye on a wedge head reads as a different animal entirely.

The placement is worth labouring because it changes how the eye has to be built. On a tabby or a ginger cat, the eye sits in fur of a similar mid tone, so it needs its own internal contrast to stand out. On a Siamese it is already doing that job, because the mask around it is dark. What the design has to protect is the edge of the eye, the clean almond boundary between pale iris and dark surround. Lose that edge and the eye muddies into the mask.

Which leads back to the photo, because the usual way this edge gets lost is a wide open pupil. In a dim room the pupil swallows the iris, and on a Siamese that leaves you with a dark eye inside a dark mask and no feature at all. Ordinary indirect daylight narrows the pupil and brings the blue back.

How much does the point colour change the palette?

A great deal, and it is worth knowing which one their cat is before you pick a fabric colour. Point colours include seal, chocolate, blue and lilac, and they do not simply go lighter and darker. They change temperature, and the pale body shifts with them.

One practical note on base colour that applies across all four. The pale body of a Siamese is a light warm or light cool neutral, which is exactly the range most sweatshirt ranges live in. A fawn bodied seal point on a beige or sand base loses its outline, and a blue point on grey does the same thing. Choose a deeper shade or something clearly warmer or cooler than the cat, and the silhouette appears straight away. You can also simply ask us, since nothing goes near a machine until you have approved the design.

Which photo shows the point boundaries?

Backlighting is the single biggest problem with Siamese photos and it is worth being blunt about it. Cats like windowsills, so a very high proportion of cat photos are taken with a bright window behind the cat. On a tabby you can usually still read the markings. On a Siamese, the whole animal flattens into one dark mass and every boundary vanishes at once. If the only photo you have is backlit, send it and say so, but a new one taken with the light coming from the side or slightly in front of the cat will give a far better portrait.

The second thing is the angle. Photographed straight on, the wedge of the head foreshortens into something much rounder and the ears appear to shrink, which undoes the two features the breed is known for. A slight three quarter turn shows the straight line of the profile and the true ear size at the same time. Our general guide to the best photo for an embroidered pet portrait covers the wider rules, including the business of photographing an animal that will not be positioned.

Every photo is reviewed by a person before any design work starts. About 70 per cent are approved with no edits at all, and roughly 1 in 25 need a retake, where we come back and ask for another. On a Siamese, a retake almost always means the light was behind the cat.

Which Siamese cat gifts actually work?

Everything below is embroidered rather than printed, designed from your photo, and made to order in our Cambridge studio. Starting prices were correct in October 2026.

If you want ideas that have nothing to do with us, our wider cat guides cover more ground than this page does: what to get someone who loves their cat and Christmas gifts for cat lovers. The closest comparison to a Siamese is a Ragdoll, which carries the same colourpoint markings but on a silky semi long coat, so the point boundaries blur instead of staying sharp. Our pet gifts by breed page lists every breed we have written up. If the cat you are buying for is a different sort of subject altogether, we have written up ginger cat gifts, where the problem is finding a pattern that barely shows, and black cat gifts, where there is no pattern to find at all.

How long does it take, and when should you order?

The lead time is 2 to 3 weeks depending on how busy the studio is, and the current figure is shown at checkout rather than guessed at here. Everything is made to order, so there is no shelf with a Siamese sweatshirt on it.

• Day 0, you orderYou upload the photo at checkout and tell us anything useful, including the point colour if you know it and whether the dark on the forelegs stops high or low.
• Within a day or two, we review the photoA person checks it before any design work begins. About 70 per cent are approved with no edits. Roughly 1 in 25 come back for a retake, usually because the cat was lit from behind.
• Then, the designThe portrait is designed from your photo and sent over for approval. Unlimited revisions, so the mask shape, the ear size and the leg boundaries can all be adjusted until it is him.
• 2 to 3 weeks from order, stitched and shippedMade in Cambridge on one of our 29 embroidery machines and shipped worldwide. Free UK delivery over £75, or £3.99 Royal Mail 48 Tracked below that.

For Christmas, take the date you want it in their hands, count back 3 weeks and order before that. Any long sleeved clothing also gets free sleeve embroidery, which is a small icon such as a paw print or a heart plus a name, and on a Siamese piece it is a useful place to put a little colour, since the portrait itself works in a narrow palette plus one strong blue.

When is Lucy & Lola not the right answer?

Often enough that it is worth saying plainly, rather than letting you spend an evening on us for nothing.

• Your budget is under £20. Our cheapest embroidered piece is the £25 patch, and most pieces sit between £50 and £80. Our stocking fillers for pet lovers collection starts at £2, but those are stock designs and small extras rather than a portrait of their cat, and the range changes. For a genuinely cheap gift with their Siamese in it, a printed photo in a decent frame beats anything we sell at that price.
• You want a figurine, a model or an ornament. We do not make them and have no plans to. Look for a ceramicist, a pet sculptor or a needle felting maker instead, and you will find all three on Etsy or at a craft market.
• You need it in a few days. Made to order means 2 to 3 weeks really is 2 to 3 weeks. Buy something immediate now and give the portrait later, or hand over a card saying it is being made.
• You want a painting, a print or an illustration. Everything we make is embroidered, apart from a small range of large scale print graphic sweatshirts. If the brief is paint on canvas, commission a painter.
• You actually want a generic Siamese design. Some people do, and that is fine. An illustrator or a print shop will be faster and cheaper, and nothing on this page applies to you. Just check the ears are big enough.

Frequently asked questions