They are golden-eyed, with silky coats of flawless chocolate brown or blue-grey, and they curl affectionately around the legs of total strangers. Already there are about 40 of them living in bamboo huts built on stilts in the middle of Inle Lake, a huge expanse of water flanked by forested mountains in eastern Burma.
Eighty years after the last Burmese cats vanished from their homeland, they are back — and proliferating rapidly — thanks to Harrods department store and a Hong Kong conservationist named Wong How Man.
Mr Wong’s previous claims to fame include discovering an unknown source of the Yangtze river. More recently, he crossed China’s border into Burma’s Shan state and found himself staying at a hotel on Inle Lake owned by Ohn Maung, a former opposition MP from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.
The two men lamented the disappearance of the Burmese cat, a proud feature of the country’s palaces until they were overwhelmed in the early 20th century by the lesser tabbies of British colonialists. The pair resolved to reintroduce them — but finding some proved unexpectedly difficult.
The last authentic Burmese cat is said to have been taken out of the country by an American sailor in 1930. Most Burmese cats in America and Britain are descended from that single female, but afficionados consider the British line to be purer.
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Mr Wong flew to London and began shopping around but, he said, “people just didn’t want to deal with us”. Most would sell the cats only after being de-sexed, and to British residents.
In desperation, Mr Wong asked the concierge at his Knightsbridge hotel if he knew of a pet shop. “Closest is Harrods,” the concierge replied. The lady in the pet department, which famously once sent an alligator to No?l Coward and a baby elephant named Gertie to Ronald Reagan, told them that six kittens were expected within a month.
Mr Wong got four British friends to buy one each, at £900 apiece. He shipped them to his home in Hong Kong, along with two from Australia, and began breeding them. In August last year he sent seven to Burma.
Inle Lake is studded with stilted villages whose inhabitants grow vegetables on floating gardens that rest on beds of matted reeds. It was a perfect location. The cats were installed in two stilted huts, safe from impregnation by alley cats, and pampered by staff from Ohn Maung’s hotel.
The cats have multiplied so quickly that Mr Wong is considering giving some to leading monks and film stars to raise their status in the eyes of ordinary Burmese. He jokes about breaking Burma’s political deadlock by giving a male to Ms Suu Kyi, now in her 14th year of house arrest, and a female to Burma’s top general. “Perhaps they could consider conciliation and work out a plan to mate their cats,” he says.
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OTHER HAPPY RETURNS
The yellow-shouldered Amazon parrot, known as “the Barbie doll of the parrot world” was reintroduced to Venezuela in 2000
Beavers have been reintroduced to Scotland after 400 years
The number of California condors in California has swelled from 23 in 1982 to 355 today
Only 18 Pere David’s deer were left in China after the Boxer Revolution of 1900. They were taken to England for breeding and returned to Beijing in the 1980s