Miranda von Kirchberg (Bickford-Smith by marriage), who was a successful breeder and well-known breeder of Russian Blues with the prefix Astahazy, had purchased a male Chinchilla (Persian type) cat as a pet for her husband.  This cat was called Jemari Sanquist, and just before he was due to be neutered, he managed to gain access to one of Miranda’s Burmese females (she dabbled in Burmese for a time in the early ’80s), Bambino Lilac Fabergé.  On the 11th of September, this mating produced a litter of four females of mostly Burmese ‘type’ (body confirmation, head shape, etc.), but with the Black Silver Shaded appearance coming from the Chinchilla.  Miranda was so taken with the appearance of these accidental kittens that she decided to look a developing it into a breed in its own right.

Miranda and one of her friends, Thérèse Clarke (Kartush), began working with these striking cats and, after meeting resistance from Burmese breeders to the idea of calling them ‘Silver Burmese’, decided on the name Burmilla, as a contraction of the Burmese and Chinchilla names.  As development continued, Miranda and some of her friends became interested in the range of different colours, patterns, and even the two coat lengths, that the matings produced.  She formed the Burmilla-Asian Association in 1985, to develop this whole group within the GCCF.  Meanwhile, the Clarkes wanted to work exclusively with the original Black Silver Shaded Burmillas, and worked towards having these accepted within the Cat Association of Great Britain (the predecessor to Felis Brittanica), rather than the GCCF.  Miranda’s club is still running today, now called the Asian Group Cat Society (AGCS), and Matt and I are both on the Committee.

The GCCF awarded preliminary recognition to the five breeds of the Asian Group in 1990.  The Asian Smokes, Burmillas, and Tabbies achieved Championship status in 1997, followed by the Selfs/Torties in 2000, and finally the Tiffanies in 2003.  Since gaining full recognition, the group has taken numerous Best of Variety awards at a range of shows, including the GCCF Supreme Show, which is the top show in the GCCF calendar – the feline equivalent of Crufts.  The breed has also taken its fair share of Overall Best in Show awards at All Breed shows around the country, though has not, as yet, succeeded in taking that honour at the Supreme.

In 1988 only 67 cats of the Asian Group were registered.  By 1993 the GCCF was registering over 200 cats of the Asian Group per year and between 1995 and 2008 there were over 500 registered each year, peaking at 854 in 2000.  Unfortunately numbers have diminished since the economic crash of 2008 caused many breeders to give up, and in recent years there have only been 2-300 registered each year.  Tiffanies have historically made up less than 14% of all Asians registered, though the percentage has gone up to nearer 20% in recent years.  Our first Asian girl, Annas, was the first Tiffanie to win an Imperial title, the first to win the UK title, and the first to win an Olympian certificate, so the breed still had a lot of firsts to achieve when we initially got involved, though it’s progressed a lot since then!