Siam (Hayes family cat)

A diplomatic gift with whiskers. The American consul in Bangkok, David Sickels, arranged to ship a Siamese cat to Lucy Hayes in 1878, and when Siam arrived in 1879 she was reportedly the first Siamese cat in the United States. She became a pet of the Hayes daughter Fanny. Her story belongs to the Gilded Age moment when American consuls were reaching into Asia and exotic goods were turning up in American parlors. It is also brief: Siam fell ill and died at the White House. No photograph of her is known, so the picture here shows Bangkok in the 1860s.