No other breed of cat has such a big profile as the siamese cat, with it's blue eyes and dark feet and mask. It has a reputation for being demanding and temperamental. It is unique.

It's famous colouring is in fact a result of leucism, which I touched upon in my piece about  Alba. It is a mild form of albinism. However what is particularly interesting about Siamese cats is that the production of pigment is inhibited by body heat, so that a concentration of colour is found in the extremeties.

There are many myths surrounding the Siamese, that it is a temple cat, bred by monks, or a royal cat, exclusive to the palaces of Siam, and there is no doubt that for a cat with so much grace and elegance, any kind of romantic story around it's origins are easy to believe.

In the painting, the cat is shown in a still life with a plastic buddha, which is a reference to all the stories and myths based around this breed of cat, but also it is about how we create a fantasy or some kind of exotic ideal and project it onto a suitable vessel. The title, which I borrowed from a Hanif Kureishi novel, seemed to sum up my sentiments exactly. I think of suburbia as a rather prosaic place, where one might expect a buddha to be plastic, and the cat, to add a little bit of oriental mystery!