There are actually 2 kinds of Burmese cats – the American Burmese and the European Burmese! We have the same pawesome personality but we look a bit different. The American Burmese comes in 4 solid colors (sable, platinum, champagne, and blue) while the European Burmese comes in lots of different colors and also a tortoiseshell pattern. Americans also have a more rounded head and compact body than Europeans. Many cat registries don’t differentiate between us, but the CFA considers us separate breeds.

My breed as we are today can all be traced back to one ancestor – a cat named Wong Mau. Wong Mau was a walnut-brown female with dark brown points and came from Burma (which is called Myanmar today). In 1930, a sailor brought Wong Mau to the United States and she was given to Dr. Joseph Thompson. Dr. Thompson was a Siamese cat breeder from San Francisco, and he decided to breed Wong Mau with a seal point Siamese named Tai Mau in order to figure out exactly what breed Wong Mau was. The litter resulted in some kittens that looked more Siamese and some that were brown with dark brown points like Wong Mau. This led Dr. Thompson to believe that Wong Mau was a hybrid of a Siamese and a native cat of Burma. He then bred Wong Mau with one of her brown kittens and produced a litter that included dark brown kittens (the color the humans call sable today) and those were the kittens that the Burmese breeding program was based on. The Cat Fanciers’ Association first recognized us in 1936 but they weren’t happy that many humans were crossbreeding us with Siamese cats to increase our numbers. They took away our purebred status in 1947 and they meant business, so Burmese breeders had to be very strict with their breeding programs in order to get us back in the show ring. Finally, in 1957, the CFA let us back in and by the 1970s we were the third most popular breed in America (behind the Persian and the Siamese). Many different breeds come from the Burmese, including the Bombay, Burmilla, and Tonkinese. Interestingly enough, the Tonkinese (which was recognized by the CFA in 1984) is a Siamese/Burmese cross – the exact thing they kicked us out for – and my ancestor Wong Mau was also a Siamese/Burmese-type mix!