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Tonkinese In the Beginning
In the mid-1950s, Milan Greer, a pet-shop operator in New York City, crossed colorpointed Siamese and Burmese cats to form a new variety that was intermediate in type between those breeds. Greer named his cats golden Siamese, but he discontinued the project before he had bred enough golden Siamese to carry on the name.
In the early 1960s, apparently by coincidence, a Canadian cat fancier named Margaret Conroy decided to cross a sealpoint Siamese and a sable Burmese in order to form a more perfect union and a more perfect cat. In those days, the Siamese was not yet the imperially slim, something-of-an-acquired-taste, art deco composition it is today; and Burmese had yet to achieve (or to be afflicted with, depending on one's point of view) the contemporary look. Nevertheless, Conroy was convinced that Siamese had begun to evolve away from popular taste. Thus, she concluded, the cat world was ready for a new and clever hybrid which would occupy a middle-of-the-road equator between the hemispheres substantial and svelte.
When Conroy began working on her Siamese-Burmese crosses, she, too, used the name golden Siamese for a few years before tonkinese was adopted. With help from friends, Conroy wrote a standard for an "intermediate" breed and presented this standard to the Canadian Cat Association. CCA accepted tonkinese for registration and, in 1985, for championship status, making tonkinese the first breed developed in Canada.
In creating the tonkinese , Conroy was reinventing the hybrid. In 1930 a female cat named Wong Mau, from whom all Burmese cats are descended, arrived in the United States. Wong Mau was a brown cat with darker color on her face, legs, feet, and tail. Bred to a sealpoint Siamese, she produced both Siamese cats and other offspring that looked like herself, with darker bodies than the Siamese and with less contrast between point color and body color.
Obviously, Wong Mau was a hybrid. She was--in addition to being the matriarch of the Burmese breed--the precursor of today's tonkinese . Indeed, she was a tonkinese cat before tonkinese were invented; and the "light" phase kittens that Joseph Thompson, Wong Mau's owner, wrote about were perhaps the earliest examples of this variety.
By the end of the 1960s, Margaret Conroy was no longer breeding cats; but by then the tonkinese gospel had already spread to the United States, where it was capably presented by Jane Barletta (B'SSA cattery), who had bred Siamese before switching to tonks in 1965. An avowed believer in moderation--"I don't like to fool with Mother Nature; it bothers me"--Barletta has never been moderate about spending time and energy in the service of a breed accepted by every association in the North America. (The now-defunct Independent Cat Federation, in 1972, was the first United States registry to recognize tonkinese .)
Although Siamese and Burmese breeders made pointed remarks at first about their cats' look-alike cousins with the sound- alike names, that sort of hostility has been toned down considerably over the years. Most Siamese and Burmese breeders accept the Tonk as another legitimate breed. "In fact," said one tonkinese breeder, "it's heartening that there are a number of people who breed both Burmese and tonkinese ."
For its part, the cat-loving public has never shown anything but enthusiasm for the tonkinese . "When I go to a cat show," said a tonkinese breeder, "and people see my cats--especially if I have some pointed tonkinese with me--they'll say, 'Oh, that's like the Siamese that we had for fifteen years.' There's a big demand for tonkinese among people who had the old style component breeds for a long time and now can't find them anymore. These are people who like the more moderate, less extreme look."
It Looks Like The tonkinese has a medium-length torso that is strong and muscular without being coarse. Its abdomen is taut, well muscled, and firm, and its back may rise slightly from shoulder to rump. The tonk's legs are slim, but proportionate in length and in bone to its body. The tail, also proportionate in length to the body, should be medium to medium long, tapering to a slightly blunted tip.
The tonkinese has a modified-wedge-shaped head, a bit longer than it is wide. In profile the tonk exhibits a slight, convex curve in the forehead, extending from the top of the head to just above the eyes. There is a slight stop at eye level. Alert, medium-sized, broad-at-the-base ears with oval tips are set as much on the sides of the head as on the top.
Eye eye color is the tonk's one indulgence. Its brilliant aqua-colored eyes--a transcendent combination of blue from the Siamese and gold from the Burmese--range from aquamarine to turquoise. The tonk's eyes are almond shaped, medium in size, in proportion to the face, and slightly rounded on the bottom.
The tonkinese has a short to medium short, close-lying coat. This fine, soft, and silky coat is universally recognized in blue mink, champagne mink, honey mink, natural mink, and platinum mink. A few associations accept tonkinese in solid mink and pointed colors as well.
Mink does not describe the feel of the tonkinese coat, but the original tonkinese pattern: a medium brown that shaded to a lighter hue on a cat's underparts and to a dark brown color at its extremities. To achieve correctly balanced color, breeders must restrict the expression of the gene for point coloration to a medium tone while avoiding any solid-color appearance that makes the tonkinese look like a spoiled Burmese.
Personality
On a scale on one to ten, if all the Siamese characteristics were 1s and all the Burmese characteristics were 10s, the ideal Burmese would be a perfect 5. This is a breed that believes in moderation in all things, except moderation.