Diamond and Gold

The Public Domain Review's post on the Tamra Maew, the Thai treatises on cats, says the classic Siamese is the breed "called Wichien Maat, or Moon Diamond". Cabinet magazine and Wikipedia say the same. The Thai spelling says diamond and gold. The post also opens with Siam, the first Siamese cat in America, and the Hayes Presidential Center's own account of that cat runs nearly the other way.

Two folds of a Thai folding-book manuscript: a grey cat above and a white cat with dark ears, face, paws and tail below, each beside four lines of Thai verse — A *samut khoi* page: the grey cat above is a Maleht, the white one below the Wichien Maat type (Thai Wikipedia's caption names the two). Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

One letter

วิเชียรมาศ

Both endings are pronounced the same, mat. Written with ศ, มาศ means gold, from Sanskrit māṣa, a weight of gold. Written with ส, มาส means moon or month, from Pali and Sanskrit māsa. The cat's name is spelled with ศ, so วิเชียรมาศ is "diamond" plus "gold".

Why English sources say "Moon Diamond" is my guess, not a finding: the two endings sound the same, and the moon one got picked somewhere along the way. I have not found where the English gloss started. Manuscript spellings vary, and I have not checked how the treatises themselves spell the name.

Eight points

In the translation Cabinet printed in 2008, the verse for this cat counts its dark points: "Upper mouth, tail, four paws, and two ears, / Eight points of pure black". Here is the cat from the page above, enlarged. Tap the eight.

The white cat from the manuscript page, enlarged: dark ears, dark mouth, four dark paws and a dark tail curling round its front legs

The painter got all eight in. Today's Thai breed description on Thai Wikipedia counts nine: the face, both ears, four feet, the tail, and the genitals. That article carries a citation-needed tag.

Siam, 1878–1879

The PDR's opening paragraph against the Hayes Presidential Center's "Siam: America's First Siamese Cat" (Paper Trail no. 2, February 2004), which works from the letters themselves:

PDR	Hayes Presidential Center
The crate was opened "in the fall of 1878"	David B. Sickels's letter from Bangkok is dated 1 November 1878, and the crate was opened "more than two months" after he wrote. That is January 1879 at the earliest. The Presidential Pet Museum gives 1879.
The cat "did not take well to its new home"	Siam "adjusted rapidly" and liked to make an entrance when the First Lady had guests
Fell ill "not long after its arrival"	Fell ill in the autumn of 1879, while the family was away at Spiegel Grove: most of a year later
"Hayes' daughter reported" the decline	Nellie McCrary, daughter of the Secretary of War, wrote to Fanny Hayes with the bad news
"a veterinarian's prescribed diet"	The diet came from Dr. J. H. Baxter, the president's own physician. He was an Army doctor, the Chief Medical Purveyor, and later Surgeon General.
"beef tea and milk every three hours"	Word for word

Siam lived five more days. The steward, Billy Crump, took the body to the Secretary of Agriculture to be preserved. The Center says it has never been found, in the Department's museum or in the Smithsonian.

Twenty-two years later the Siamese Cat Club in London asked the Siamese Legation about the royal cat. The reply they received on 17 September 1901, as Cabinet quotes it: "There is no Royal Cat of Siam."

Smaller checks

PDR	Source
Seventeen breeds "included in most versions"	Wikipedia: "Typically, seventeen auspicious breeds are listed." Cabinet: seventeen, "though some include as many as twenty-two".	matches
Surviving copies all date from after the sack of 1767	Cabinet: all from after the Bangkok restoration, 1782 onwards	fits
Cabinet's phrases: "eyes like dewdrops on a lotus", "white as cliffs"	Both in Cabinet's translation, for the Lao Flower and the Spectacle Frame	matches
A Wichien Maat at Rama X's coronation	Not checked. Wikipedia's article on the coronation does not mention a cat.

What stands on what

Item	Source
มาศ gold, มาส moon, วิเชียรมาศ = diamond + gold	English Wiktionary entries for all three; Thai Wikipedia, วิเชียรมาศ
The verse and the 1901 Legation letter	Martin Clutterbuck, "Inventory: Auspicious Cats", Cabinet 30 (Summer 2008)
Siam's story	Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, Paper Trail no. 2 (February 2004), via the Internet Archive; Presidential Pet Museum, "A Siamese If You Please" (2013)
Baxter	Wikipedia, Jedediah Hyde Baxter
Image	Wikimedia Commons, Wichienmaat Thai cat.jpg, public domain
The PDR's text	"The Cat's Maew: Thai Treatise on Auspicious Felines (19th Century)", text by Erica X Eisen
Point positions on the drawing	Placed by me, by eye