Burmilla

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Two genes do most of the work. The inhibitor gene suppresses pigment along the shaft of each hair, leaving the base pale and the color concentrated toward the tip; the agouti gene decides how the remaining pigment is distributed. How far the pigment reaches decides which of the two patterns you are looking at. In tipped coats — also called shell or chinchilla — only the extreme tip carries color, and from a few feet away the cat looks almost white with a shimmer. In shaded coats the pigment reaches further down, giving visible depth along the back and flanks over a pale belly.

Both patterns come in two divisions: in the silver division the undercoat is white, and in the golden division it is a warm apricot to cream, which turns the same cat from moonlight into candlelight. CFA recognizes a long list of colors across both, including black, blue, chocolate, lilac, caramel, cream, red, seal sepia, and tortoiseshell variations.

Judges assess evenness of tipping by blowing gently against the lie of the coat and watching whether the shading transitions smoothly or breaks into patches. Kittens change substantially, so nobody can promise you a show cat at eight weeks.

CFA’s own description of the breed blends the mischievous, outgoing European Burmese with the placid Chinchilla Persian, and that is how it feels in practice: a cat interested in everything you do, following you from room to room, then settling instead of escalating.

1. Sociable without being demanding. Burmillas greet visitors instead of hiding under the bed — a good fit for a household where people come and go.
2. Quiet voiced. The Burmese line is famous for opinions loudly expressed; the Burmilla inherited the opinions and not the volume. Owners describe short chirps and trills rather than sustained yowling.
3. Playful into adulthood. Kitten behavior persists well past the first year, so wand toys and puzzle feeders get used daily, not occasionally.
4. Clever and food-motivated. Many Burmillas take readily to clicker sessions and learn to sit up, touch a target stick, or come when called. Two five-minute sessions a day beat one long one.
5. Poor at solitude. The honest drawback. A Burmilla left alone through long workdays with no companion animal and no enrichment becomes bored and sometimes destructive, and that is the most common reason a placement goes wrong.

With children the breed does well, provided the children learn the lesson every cat requires: a cat that walks away has ended the interaction. Give it elevated retreats and most conflicts never start. With other pets the record is good — Burmillas usually integrate with other cats, and with a calm, cat-experienced dog, when the introduction runs gradually through a closed door and then a barrier.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

• Brushing – Once a week with a soft brush or grooming glove for the shorthair, twice a week for the semi-long coat. The single coat means mats are rare.
• Bathing – Rarely. Most Burmillas tolerate water well, but frequent washing dulls the silver rather than brightening it.
• Eyes – Wipe the inner corners with a soft damp cloth if discharge collects; on a pale coat, staining shows early.
• Teeth – Brushing several times a week with cat toothpaste is the highest-value grooming habit you can build, and far easier to start in a kitten than in a five-year-old.
• Claws – Trim the sharp tips every two to three weeks and provide scratching surfaces in several textures. Soft vinyl nail caps are an option for households worried about furniture.

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.

• 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.

Is the Burmilla recognized by CFA and TICA?
Yes, by both. CFA accepted the breed for registration in 2011 and advanced it to championship in 2014, with the shorthair and longhair divisions moving together. TICA’s board voted in 2014 and championship took effect on May 1, 2015. The registries organize it differently: CFA treats it as one breed with two coat divisions, while TICA lists the Burmilla and the Burmilla Longhair separately.

Should I look for a CFA or a TICA breeder?
Either is legitimate, and many American catteries register with both. CFA registers a cat as a Burmilla on the strength of its ancestry — the parents must be Burmillas or a permitted outcross. TICA gives more weight to type measured against the written standard and requires fewer documented generations, which is why it recognizes more new and hybrid breeds. What matters more than the logo is whether the litter is registered at all, when you receive the slip, and whether the breeder can produce health results for both parents.

Which two DNA tests should the breeder show me?
PKD1, the dominant polycystic kidney disease variant from the Chinchilla Persian founder, and the WNK4 variant that causes Burmese hypokalemia. Both are offered by the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at UC Davis and both appear on Wisdom Panel’s Optimal Selection Feline panel. Ask for reports showing the cat’s registered name or microchip number, the laboratory, and the variant tested.

What is the practical difference between a dominant and a recessive risk?
For PKD1, which is dominant, one copy is enough to make the cat affected — there are no healthy carriers, so the breeder simply must not breed a positive cat. For the WNK4 variant, which is recessive, a cat with one copy is completely healthy and can be bred safely to a clear partner; only a carrier-to-carrier mating produces affected kittens, at an average rate of one in four. That is why “one parent is a carrier” is an acceptable answer for hypokalemia and an unacceptable one for PKD.

Are Burmillas hypoallergenic?
No, and no breed of cat is. Every cat produces the Fel d 1 protein in saliva and skin secretions, and it spreads over the coat during washing. Production varies enormously between individual cats — more than it varies between breeds — so claims that this breed carries a fixed percentage less allergen than average have no measurement behind them. If someone in the household is allergic, spend time with the specific cat and talk to an allergist.

Is declawing my Burmilla legal where I live?
That depends on your state and your city. New York banned elective declawing in 2019, Maryland in 2022, Virginia in 2024, and Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and California in 2025, with California’s ban effective at the start of 2026; the District of Columbia bans it too. Several cities prohibit it independently, including eight in California plus Denver, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Austin, and Madison. Separately, both CFA and TICA bar declawed cats from competition, and virtually every reputable American breeder writes a no-declaw clause into the contract. Regular nail trims, several scratching surfaces, and soft nail caps address the underlying problem.

Does my indoor-only cat need a rabies shot?
In roughly two-thirds of the states and in the District of Columbia, state law requires rabies vaccination for cats and makes no exception for indoor cats. In states without a statewide rule — California among them — county and city ordinances frequently impose one, so check locally. Beyond the legal answer: bats get indoors, an unvaccinated cat exposed to a suspected rabid animal faces far harsher quarantine, and the vaccine is core in the AAHA/AAFP guidelines.

How long do Burmillas live, and how big do they get?
Twelve to sixteen years is the realistic range with good care. Adults typically weigh eight to fifteen pounds, males substantially heavier, on a compact frame that feels heavier in the hand than the cat looks. Longer lifespan ranges that appear on some pages are not supported by anything.

Can a Burmilla handle being alone while I work?
A normal workday is manageable; a long commute on top of long hours, five days a week, is where this breed struggles. Burmillas are strongly people-oriented and get bored rather than being destructive by nature. The reliable fixes are a second cat, height and window access, puzzle feeders that turn one meal into a project, and interactive play when you get home. If nobody will be home for ten hours a day and a second animal is out of the question, there are better-suited breeds.

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.