History
Burmese cats were named after the country, Burma which today is known as Myanmar. It is believed that Burmese monks kept these cats to protect their precious scrolls and documents from rodent damage.
The modern history of the Burmese cats in the United States goes back to 1930 when a naval psychiatrist doctor Joseph Cressman Thompson return from Yangon, Burma with a walnut brown female cat named Wong Mau. He had kept Wong Mau on the naval station as pet.
Doctor Thompson believed Wong Mau was a new breed of cat, so he made every effort to keep the original characteristics of this new breed that he had introduced to the West.
When he introduced Wong Mau to the cat fanciers, they were not impressed. Some of them actually believed it was a bad looking Siamese cat. So, in order to prove them wrong, and since doctor Thompson did not have a male cat of a similar type, he mated Wong Mau to a Siamese cat named Tai Mau. Wong Mau produced hybrids and Siamese. With his breeding work doctor Thompson figured out that when the Burmese/Siamese hybrids were mated together, the darker coated Burmese were produced.
The modern history of the Burmese cats in the United States goes back to 1930 when a naval psychiatrist doctor Joseph Cressman Thompson return from Yangon, Burma with a walnut brown female cat named Wong Mau. He had kept Wong Mau on the naval station as pet.
Doctor Thompson believed Wong Mau was a new breed of cat, so he made every effort to keep the original characteristics of this new breed that he had introduced to the West.
When he introduced Wong Mau to the cat fanciers, they were not impressed. Some of them actually believed it was a bad looking Siamese cat. So, in order to prove them wrong, and since doctor Thompson did not have a male cat of a similar type, he mated Wong Mau to a Siamese cat named Tai Mau. Wong Mau produced hybrids and Siamese. With his breeding work doctor Thompson figured out that when the Burmese/Siamese hybrids were mated together, the darker coated Burmese were produced.
