The Burmilla is a medium-sized cat whose coat carries color only at the very tips of an otherwise pale hair shaft, and whose eyes, nose, and lips look outlined in dark pencil that nobody drew. It exists because of one unplanned meeting between a Persian and a Burmese in an English cattery in 1981, and it reached American show halls only in this century. This guide is written for a reader in the United States: which registration papers to look at, which two DNA results separate a careful breeder from a careless one, and which state and city laws actually govern your cat's claws, shots, and travel. You can read more about this breed and hundreds of others on Tvaryny.
Burmilla: Breed at a Glance
Burmilla: Breed at a Glance · 11
| Quick Facts About the Burmilla Breed | |
|---|---|
| Origin | United Kingdom, 1981 |
| Parent breeds | Chinchilla Persian and lilac European Burmese |
| CFA status | Registration 2011; championship 2014, shorthair and longhair divisions |
| TICA status | Board vote 2014, championship effective May 1, 2015; Burmilla and Burmilla Longhair listed separately |
| Other registries | GCCF within the Asian group, FIFe from 1995, WCF |
| Adult weight | 8–15 pounds; males noticeably heavier |
| Height at the shoulder | Roughly 9–11 inches |
| Average lifespan | 12–16 years |
| Coat | Short or semi-long, silver or golden, tipped or shaded |
| Eye color | Any shade of green, rimmed in dark pigment |
| Suits | Apartments and condos, families with children, homes where someone is around |
A note on genetics: the outgoing, people-centered half of the character comes from the Burmese cat, while the silver veil and the calmer half of the temperament come from the Chinchilla side of the Persian cat. Breeders who have worked with both describe the result as the Burmese personality with the volume turned down about a third.
How the Breed Happened: One Door Left Open
Most cat breeds have a founding story that involves a plan. The Burmilla's involves a door that was not latched.
In 1981, Baroness Miranda von Kirchberg kept Burmese cats in England and had also bought a Chinchilla Persian male, Jemari Sanquist, as a pet rather than as breeding stock. He was scheduled to be neutered. Shortly before the appointment a door was left open overnight, and a lilac Burmese female named Bambino Lilac Faberge reached him. The litter arrived on September 11, 1981: four kittens, all female, all shorthaired, all black shaded silver. Instead of being placed as pets and forgotten, they became the foundation of a breeding program.
Two details are worth fixing in memory, because older articles get them wrong: the founder was a baroness, not a duchess, and Faberge was a lilac Burmese, not a lilac-tortoiseshell. The genetics behind the accident are what made it worth pursuing. The Chinchilla Persian carries the dominant inhibitor gene, which suppresses pigment along most of each hair and leaves color near the tip; the Burmese contributed body type, a short single coat, and the temperament.
Turning four kittens into a breed took a decade of unglamorous work. In Britain the Burmilla was folded into a wider group called Asian, which also covers the semi-longhaired Tiffanie; the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy granted a preliminary championship in 1990 and full championship status in 2003. The Fédération Internationale Féline recognized the breed from January 1, 1995, and the World Cat Federation lists it too. Burmillas reached the United States in the mid-1990s in small numbers, then spent roughly fifteen years in limbo: real cats with real pedigrees and no path to an American championship ring.
The Burmilla in America: CFA and TICA, Step by Step
The Cat Fanciers' Association, headquartered in the United States and the largest registry of pedigreed cats in the world, accepted the Burmilla — shorthair and longhair alike — for registration in 2011. Registration is not competition: the cats and their litters enter the studbook and their ancestry is tracked, but they are not yet campaigning for titles. Championship status followed in 2014, after a CFA board vote in February of that year, with both divisions advancing together.
The International Cat Association, based in Texas, ran a parallel process: its board voted in August 2014 and championship status took effect on May 1, 2015. Within months the breed had its first TICA Supreme Grand Champion — a sign that American breeders had been waiting for the door to open.
So the Burmilla is fully recognized here, in both major registries, but the recognition is recent. Three consequences follow. American catteries are few compared with the Maine Coon or the Ragdoll, so waiting lists are normal and you may be looking outside your own state. Much of the gene pool still traces to Britain, Europe, and Australia, which is why the testing conversation below is not optional. And plenty of pages still claim the breed is not recognized by CFA — true before 2011, wrong ever since.
CFA vs. TICA: Two Different Ideas of What a Breed Is
American buyers often assume the two registries are interchangeable. They are not: they disagree about what makes a cat a member of a breed.
CFA registers by ancestry. A cat is a Burmilla because its parents were Burmillas, or because the mating was an outcross the breed's own rules permit. The pedigree is the authority. That is the more traditional approach, and it is why CFA's list of accepted breeds is shorter and skews toward long-established ones.
TICA gives far more weight to type. A cat can be registered as the breed it physically is, judged against the written standard, with fewer generations of documented ancestry behind it. That makes TICA much more hospitable to new breeds and to hybrids, and explains why its breed list includes cats CFA does not recognize at all.
They also structure the road to recognition differently. TICA publishes hard thresholds: moving from Preliminary New Breed to Advanced New Breed takes at least 25 registered litters, at least 25 individual cats shown at TICA events, and at least 15 members breeding it across five regions; reaching championship takes another year plus at least 200 adults registered in a full member association of the World Cat Congress, at least 50 of them with TICA. CFA's ladder runs from registration through the Miscellaneous and Provisional classes and leans on people and judgments rather than head counts alone: 25 breeders working with the breed to leave Miscellaneous, then an application listing every breeder, every registered cat, every show entered, and the judges' written evaluations. When championship arrives, the breed committee becomes a breed council, which votes on the standard itself.
The show halls differ accordingly. A CFA show runs perhaps four to ten rings across a weekend, with classes split by title, sex, and color; a TICA show is usually larger, ten to twenty rings over two or three days, with classes split mainly by color and more placements awarded. CFA's top honor is National Winner, and it calls the altered class Premiership; TICA runs a longer ladder up to Supreme Grand Champion and awards separate Alter titles. Neither system is better — they measure different things.
Reading the Codes on an Imported Pedigree
What a Burmilla Looks Like
The Burmilla weighs more than it looks like it should: a muscular, compact body rather than a long tubular one, with a straight back, a broad chest, and slender but strong legs. Females run distinctly smaller than males.
- Head – A gently rounded wedge, wider at the top than at the muzzle, with a firm chin; mature males develop heavier cheeks.
- Ears – Medium to large, set wide, tilted slightly forward, with rounded tips.
- Eyes – Large and well spaced, with a full upper curve and a flatter lower line. Green in any shade is the goal; young cats often pass through yellow or amber first.
- The "makeup" – A dark line rims the eyes, lips, and edge of the nose leather in the same pigment as the tipping. This is the signature, and the fastest way to tell a Burmilla from an ordinary silver tabby.
- Tail – Medium to long, thick at the base, tapering to a rounded tip, often faintly ringed.
- Coat – Short, fine, and close-lying in the shorthair; semi-long and silky in the longhair, with an easy-care single coat that does not mat the way a true longhaired breed does.
Living With a Burmilla in an American Home
Indoor-only living is the norm for pedigreed cats in the United States, and it suits a trusting, people-seeking cat with no street sense whatsoever. What it needs in exchange is vertical territory and something to do.
- Height. A tall cat tree by a window is worth more than three floor toys; a cat with a high vantage point is a calmer cat.
- A window with traffic. A feeder outside the glass or a busy sidewalk fills the hours you are at work.
- A catio, if you own the outdoor space. An enclosed porch or window box gives outdoor stimulation without the risks of free roaming, and it has become mainstream in American suburbs.
- Scratching surfaces in several textures. Sisal, cardboard, and a post tall enough for a full stretch. This matters more than it sounds — see the section on declawing law below.
- Litter box math. Standard American shelter guidance is one box per cat plus one, in separate locations, scooped daily.
Climate deserves a thought: this coat has a modest undercoat, nothing like a northern breed's insulation. In a Minnesota winter an older Burmilla goes looking for heat, and in Phoenix in July a cat shut in with the air conditioning off is at genuine risk.
Dominant vs. Recessive: Why the Difference Changes Your Questions
The two risks are inherited in opposite ways, and that changes what a clear result actually buys you.
PKD1 is autosomal dominant. One copy is enough. There is no such thing as a healthy PKD1 carrier that quietly passes it along — a cat with the variant is a cat with the disease, whether or not signs have appeared. Breed a positive cat to a clear cat and, on average, half the kittens are affected. This is the easier of the two to eliminate: test, and do not breed positives. A breeder who says PKD skips generations in this breed has misunderstood the inheritance.
The WNK4 variant is autosomal recessive. It takes two copies to make a sick cat. A cat with one copy is a carrier: completely healthy, indistinguishable by eye, by bloodwork, or by ultrasound, and perfectly usable in breeding as long as it is never mated to another carrier. Breed carrier to carrier and, on average, a quarter of the kittens are affected, half are carriers, and a quarter are clear. That is why the recessive one is the sneaky one — a cattery can go years without a sick kitten and then produce one, simply because it had never happened to pair its two carriers.
| Question | PKD1, dominant | WNK4 hypokalemia, recessive |
|---|---|---|
| Copies needed to cause disease | One | Two |
| Can a healthy cat pass it on? | No — one copy means affected | Yes — carriers are entirely healthy |
| What a clear parent guarantees | A clear parent cannot transmit it | No affected kitten, even from a carrier partner |
| The dangerous mating | Any mating involving a positive cat | Carrier to carrier |
| What to ask the breeder | "Is either parent positive?" | "Are both clear, or is one a carrier and the other clear?" |
Note the asymmetry in the last row: for the recessive condition, "one parent is a carrier" is a good answer provided the other is documented clear, and a breeder who understands this will explain it before you finish the question. Britain went a step beyond advice: since January 1, 2018, the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy has required the WNK4 test for Asian group cats registered with active breeding status, with the certificate submitted alongside the registration application and cats carrying two copies excluded from breeding. No American registry mandates anything equivalent — which is exactly why the buyer's question carries so much weight here.
Numbers That Do Not Hold Up
Two figures circulate through Burmilla articles in every language, laid out in tidy tables as though they came from a study. Both fall apart on inspection, and an earlier version of this page carried both.
The claim that PKD occurs in three to five percent of Burmillas. No such measurement exists. The one published number specific to this breed comes from Barrs and colleagues in 2001, an ultrasound survey of pedigreed cats in Sydney and Brisbane in which 2 of 14 Burmillas were positive. Fourteen cats is not a breed, and the Burmilla figure was a footnote in a study designed to measure Persians. What is true is narrower and more useful: the variant reached the breed through the founding Persian, a DNA test settles it for any individual cat, and no percentage substitutes for a report with your kitten's parents' names on it.
The claim that HCM affects eight to ten percent of Burmillas. There is no published prevalence figure for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in this breed at all. The number that keeps surfacing in that range belongs to a different breed — a Danish study by Granström and colleagues in 2011 measured roughly that rate in British Shorthairs. Borrowing another breed's prevalence and printing it under the Burmilla's name is how a plausible invention outlives an obvious one. The accurate statement: HCM is the most common heart disease in cats generally, it is documented in the Burmese-derived family, no breed rate has been established here, and the answer is a scan by a cardiologist rather than a percentage in a table.
DNA Testing in the United States: Where the Work Gets Done
The Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at UC Davis is the reference point. It offers the PKD1 test and the Burmese hypokalemia test as separate assays, and its list of breeds appropriate for the hypokalemia test names the Burmilla explicitly. Davis is also where much of the underlying science happened: the WNK4 mutation was identified by an international group that included the feline genetics laboratory there, working with colleagues in Bristol, Sydney, and elsewhere. Sampling is a cheek swab the owner takes at home and mails in.
Wisdom Panel's Optimal Selection Feline is the breeder panel most commonly seen in American catteries, and the company is TICA's official testing partner. Rather than ordering assays one at a time, it screens more than 45 genetic health risks, over 25 trait markers including coat color and type, blood type, and genetic diversity from a single swab, covering both the Persian-origin and Burmese-origin conditions.
Which to prefer depends on why you are testing: a breeder planning matings benefits from the panel, while a buyer verifying one claim benefits from the short, unambiguous single-assay report. Either way, insist that the document shows the cat's registered name or microchip number, the laboratory's name, and the variant tested. A screenshot with the identifying details cropped out is not evidence.
Buying a Burmilla Kitten in the United States
Burmilla vs. Related Breeds
| Breed | How it differs | Choose it instead if… |
|---|---|---|
| Burmese | More intense, more vocal, more insistent; same body plan, no silver coat | You want maximum interaction and do not mind being told about it |
| British Shorthair | Heavier, calmer, more independent, plush double coat that needs more brushing in season | You want a placid cat that tolerates being alone better |
| Tiffanie or Burmilla Longhair | The same cat with a semi-long single coat; the name depends on the registry | You want a longer coat without the grooming load of a true longhair |
| Tonkinese | Also Burmese-derived and social; pointed rather than tipped, and busier | You like the Burmese personality but prefer point color |
| Chinchilla Persian | Same silver effect, very different cat: flat face, dense coat, far more grooming | You want the look and are prepared for daily coat work |
One point connects several rows: the Burmese-derived breeds share the WNK4 variant, so if you are comparing a Burmilla with a Bombay, a Tonkinese, or a Tiffanie, the hypokalemia question applies to all of them equally.
Interesting Facts About Burmillas
- The founding litter was entirely female, and the cat that sired it was days away from being neutered.
- The mutation behind Burmese hypokalemia was pinned down by an international collaboration that included the feline genetics laboratory at UC Davis — which is why an American laboratory offers the definitive test for a British breed descended from a Southeast Asian one.
- Britain requires that hypokalemia test for Asian group cats registered for active breeding; the United States requires it of no one — a difference of registry policy, not of science.
- Both American registries barred declawed cats from competition long before American legislatures began banning the procedure itself.
- Bronze figurines of the founding pair in a GCCF museum, a favorite detail of older articles, do not exist.
The Bottom Line
The Burmilla is one of the most pleasant cats to live with that most Americans have never met: sociable without being loud, decorative without being fragile, clever enough to be interesting and calm enough to be restful. Its recognition here is recent — CFA registration in 2011, championship in 2014, TICA championship from May 2015 — so finding a kitten takes patience.
What makes this an easy breed to buy well is that its two real health risks are named, understood, and testable. Ask for the PKD1 result and the WNK4 result, read them, and understand which is dominant and which is recessive. Ignore percentages no study produced, ignore promises of hypoallergenic cats, and check your own state's rules on rabies vaccination and declawing before the kitten comes home. Do those few things and you get what the Baroness stumbled into in 1981: a silver cat with penciled eyes that follows you from room to room, and then lets you work.
