They are different breeds: Siberian cats and Neva Masquerade cats..

    "Siberian cat" is the native breed. The natives are the radical inhabitants: the people or animals that live within the limits of one territory or in one country. The native land of the Siberian cats is the Far East. The population of cats lived here 200-400 years ago, was living separately for a long time. Before the people had come to these territories, there was already a stand type of a cat, which became a basis of breed "Siberian cat". Nobody have never met Siamese cats especially Himalaya Persian in our woods.
« Neva masquerade cat » is the cultural or artificial breed. It is selected by adding of blood of the Persian cats of Himalaya color (the color-point color) to Siberian cats.
The Persian cats of Himalaya color began to bring to Russia in the 80th. In the USA these colors named as the Himalaya colors, in Europe they traditionally named as the color-point cats. Then, soon, cats very like with Siberian cats had appeared, but with color-point color, they were named as Neva masquerade cats. These cats were met with a big interest. Dark marks on a muzzle, ears, paws and a tail looked vary elegance.
The factory owners wanted to change only the color. But a gene of Siamese color (is more exact allele- ñs, tyrosinase) are transferred to posterity not in itself, but only by an essential part of a genetic material. That is why together with color, the type of a cat has been changed- there appeared the features of the Persian breed: a convex forehead, a round skull, small ears, round eyes and etc. The wool thus became longer, than at Siberian cats. The axis hair became soft, not typical for the Siberian breed. Less often Persian cats were crossed with the brought Siamese cats. Kittens, born after that often had significant defects such as breaks on a tail. Such crossings were not very popular, so signs of east features such as the direct structure, the light body, large straight ears and etc. could be meet less often at Neva masquerade cats, than features of the Persian breed.
Today many experts and factory owners (for example O. Mironova, T. Pavlova) approve the Neva masquerade cat as “the Siberian native cat”. They forgot there statements and we found many articles in the magazines.
We read the article of chairman of club “Kotofei” of the WCF-judge O. Mirinova “The Siberian cats” in the magazine "A Friend ", ¹ 1, 1995, on page 16:
“Siberian cat has an interesting color variety - Neva masquerade cat. As in the Persian breed there are Himalaya cats, and in Siberian breed there are color-point cats. Thus, Neva masquerade cat is an Siberian cat of Siamese color. Certainly, this color is introduced and it is also known how it was introduced. In due time S.V. Obraztsov brought to Russia some Siamese cats and thus the population of our Siberian cats was replenished with a new gene “.
We can read in the article of T. Pavlova “The Siberian cats are a pride of Russian felinologe”, the president of Association of amateurs of Siberian cats, in magazine “Between a cat and a dog “, ¹12 (116), 2001 on page 9 the following:” For the first time Neva masquerade cats appeared in Petersburg and at once they attracted attention of public. Typical features of color, taken from Thai cats (old Thai cats), at skilful cultivation and selection do not worsened type of Siberian cat, but also brought the elegant charm and exotic into breed … “.
The Neva masquerade cat is a beautiful and interesting cat, but it isn’t a Siberian cat. The
Neva masquerade cat should have the other standard by descriptions of the breed.
Don’t you ever think about, why in Meincun and Norwegian breeds the color-point colors are forbidden by the standard? These native breeds belong to the same SLH-group, as Siberian cats. Cattery owners of these breeds understand that the Siamese gene can be only introduced in these breeds and it is unavailable for native breeds.
« In fact the same Americans who wanted to have a fluffy cat of Siamese color but not the cat of Persian type, selected the cat breed "Regdoll", instead of starting to cross color-point cats with Meinkun to get «hudson festival cats»( extract from the article “The crossing in breed: where the road goes? “of E.Shevchenko, the expert of IFÀ-ICEF-IFC) .
Even if the kittens from the Neva masquerade cat according to phenotype are Siberian cats, according to genotype they are different. See you! Tatiana Mamedova.