Breed Origins of the Birman Cat

The most skeptic breeders make fun of this romantic legend (in spite of being exceptionally full of details to be taken as false and they sustain that the sacred Burmese was created artificially in France in the twenties by the crossing of Siamese cats with bicolor (black and white) long hair cats. However, this theory stays in an interdiction if we have in mind that the whelps of the sacred Burmese always are of this same race and there doesn’t exist any history of reversions of whelps to short hair, as would be expected if there would have been any crossings in its origins.

There still is another legend in which the sacred Burmese is in fact the original cat of the temple, but a disloyal servant took cut of the temple a pregnant cat and sold it to a French traveler.

Which ever is the true explanation, at the middle of the twenties the race was consolidated in France with the name of the Sacre of Birmanie? There it was recognized in 1925 and after in Germany.

The standard specified in France for the Sacred Burmese in that epoch has only suffered minor changes, although there exits small differences between the European and American preferences. In any case, the Second World War put an end to the feline breeding in Europe and when peace came only two sacred Burmese had survived at least in the West. And in spite of everything, the race recovered.

The first Sacred Burmese arrived to the United States in 1959 from France.

The race was reinforced after with two cats that an America Diplomat had brought from Cambodia. This couple gave credit to the history of the sacred cat, due that it was said that they originally came from a Tibetan temple.

A Peculiar Breed
The two distinctive features of the sacred Burmese are its intense blue color eyes (the sapphire blue in the legend) and the totally white “gloves” in its four feet. The white mark of the hind feet end up in a point and it extends to under the hock joints. The white stains of the front feet forms a uniformed band  that goes through all the foot, but doesn’t extend to the hock joint.

This is a feature produced by the scene.

Apart from the white feet, the hair of the sacred Burmese is the same type as of the Persian color point.

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