Meet the Tonkinese Cat

While we weren’t officially bred until the mid-1960s, experts believe that a variety of cat called the "chocolate Siamese '' in the 19th century were actually early Tonks! The first American Burmese cat, a female named Wong Mau, was imported to the United States in 1930 and is now thought to have been the predecessor to the Tonkinese breed.

Regardless of when our lineage really started, we became official in the mid-1960s when Jane Barletta, a Siamese breeder in the United States, decided she wanted to develop a new and improved breed of her favorite Siamese cats. She bred a Siamese cat with a Burmese cat, and called us "Tonkinese." At around the same time, in Canada, another breeder named Margaret Conroy started crossing Siamese and Burmese cats, not because she wanted to make a new cat, but because she didn't have a male Siamese to breed with her female Siamese. She named the kittens “Tonkanese," which is a slightly different spelling than Margaret's choice.

For both Jane and Margaret, what made their new litters of Tonk kittens special were our tan mink coats and sparkling aqua blue or green eyes. And while Margaret continued breeding "Tonkanese" cats, Jane Barletta was most responsible for our rising popularity. That's probably why her spelling of "Tonkinese" won in the end. Jane advertised us in magazines and on TV, leading to Tonkinese acceptance into the Canadian Cat Association (CCA) in 1971. Other associations followed suit after that, and now we can be found meowing all over the world!