Indian Spring Cats Burmese and Tonkinese Kittens, domestic and imported
Dr. Douglas Schar
Located near Washington, DC
To contact us, scroll down to the contact form or email ddsindc@gmail.com
We Moved!
We Moved ... Indian Spring Cats is No Longer at Indian Springs!
Breaking News. We have moved. We are still in Virginia, not far from Washington, DC, just a few counties over. Still accessible to National Airport and Dulles Airport, and by car, from95, 66, and 70!
OUR THING
Breeding for Health and Personality
Heathy cats with great personalities. I fell in love with Burmese cats and their dog-like personalities long ago. When the breed faced extinction due to inbreeding, I decided to do something about it. I did a deep dive into how American Burmese were originally made and aimed at recreating the breed. This actually required a lot of research. I ended up importing Burmese cats from Thailand to start a healthy American Burmese breed. I continue to import cats from Thailand and to keep my line healthy. We are entirely focused on making the healthiest Burmese cats with the best personalities. That's our thing: health and personality through science and research.
Siamese Cats
Burmese cats were originally created by John Cheeseman Thompson using a Siamese stud and a Tonkinese queen. Thompson suspected the darker Tonkinese queen carried a new, undiscovered Thai cat gene. By breeding the Siamese to the Tonkinese, and then breeding the Tonkinese sons back to their mother, out came a solid brown cat. Thus, the Burmese cat was born in America.
ALL American Burmese trace their ancestry back to a Siamese stud (Tai Mau) and a Tonkinese queen (Wong Mau). My aim with this project was to remake the American Burmese, just healthier and longer lived. So, I started the way Thompson started: With Tonkinese and Siamese cats from Thailand. So for this reason, I occasionally have Siamese cats in my litters.
If you are looking for a healthy Siamese, let me know!
New Article
Fixing the Burmese Breed
Feline researchers and Veterinarians alike are aware that the Burmese breed is dangerously inbred and this inbreeding is causing life long illnesses and short life spans. They have said, Burmese breeders need to outcross to unrelated cats urgently.
Here is my thought. Don't think too hard on how to outcross. Recreate the breed in the same manner in which it was created.
Sadly, most people do not know a lot about the origins of the Burmese breed. This is unfortunate, because if you want to fix the problems with the Burmese breed, American or European, it would be helpful to know something about how the breed came into existence in the first place. If you know the formula that was used to make the breed, you can use that same formula to remake the breed. It is only logical.
The Burmese breed came into existence when an avid thinker, John Cheeseman Thompson, decided that there was another cat coat gene floating around Thailand besides the Siamese gene. He had seen Siamese cats in Thailand but had also seen a darker variant. He had it in his mind that this darker variant was actually a different gene to the Siamese gene. Thompson was a spy, naval psychiatrist and avid animal biologist. He was able to grab one of the darker cats from the Malay Peninsula, a cat named Wong Mau, and brought her to San Francisco. He retired from the navy and decided to test out his theory that there were at least two unique cat mutation genes in Thailand. To test his theory, he mated Wong Mau to a Siamese stud. Then he bred the darker kittens to their darker mother, and the result was dark kittens (Burmese), intermediate kittens (Tonkinese), and Siamese kittens. The darker kittens, when bred to darker kittens, bred true. They consistently produced solid brown cats.
His little experiment resulted in the Burmese breed of cat. All American Burmese cats descend from Wong Mau and Tai Mau. ALL. That is a little scary when you realize the breed was started with two cats and all American Burmese cats trace their ancestry back to two cats. But, that's another story. After Thompson died, the results of his experiment were published. Below you will find the article published about his experiment and you will see the origins of the Burmese breed.
Any breeder interested in correcting the defects found in the Burmese breed today, should read the article below which details HOW the breed was made. The formula is there. The original formula can be used today to fix the inbreeding problems within the Burmese today - use imported Siamese, Tonkinese, and Burmese cats from Thailand in your breeding program!
Bruce Lee II was my primary house cat for 12 years. He was my last pure American Burmese cat and as can be expected from these sadly inbred creatures, he got sick when he was 9 and barely made it to 12. I have lived through an inbred American Burmese dying and it is the reason I created a breeding program designed to make healthy long lived Burmese. I have imported over 40 cats from Thailand to make healthy Burmese. With any luck, it has worked. Because living through Bruce's endless illnesses was no fun for him.
He was one fabulous cat. When he was a kitten he taught himself how to use the people toilet and never used a litter box. However, he was very private about bathroom time. I never caught him in the act, but, as he did not master flushing the toilet, I would know when he had been to the bathroom. In the last year of his life I managed to catch him using the toilet. He was so mad, he jumped off the toilet and just scowled at me as he marched off in total disgust. Anyhow, here you can see Bruce Lee II, using the people toilet. He is probably in cat heaven sending me daggers for exposing his private time to the general public, but, people should know what they get when they get a Burmese cat!
In Memorium: Bruce Lee ii
Bruce Lee II: Worlds Best Cat
Bruce Lee II was my primary house cat for 12 years. He was my last pure American Burmese cat and as can be expected from these sadly inbred creatures, he got sick when he was 9 and barely made it to 12. I have lived through an inbred American Burmese dying and it is the reason I created a breeding program designed to make healthy long lived Burmese. I have imported over 40 cats from Thailand to make healthy Burmese. With any luck, it has worked. Because living through Bruce's endless illnesses was no fun for him.
He was one fabulous cat. When he was a kitten he taught himself how to use the people toilet and never used a litter box. However, he was very private about bathroom time. I never caught him in the act, but, as he did not master flushing the toilet, I would know when he had been to the bathroom. In the last year of his life I managed to catch him using the toilet. He was so mad, he jumped off the toilet and just scowled at me as he marched off in total disgust. Anyhow, here you can see Bruce Lee II, using the people toilet. He is probably in cat heaven sending me daggers for exposing his private time to the general public, but, people should know what they get when they get a Burmese cat!
Scammer Alert
Warning: There are a lot of Scammers in Operation
Dear future Burmese, Siamese, and Tonkinese kitten buyer,
Please be aware there are a lot of scammers operating at the moment. You have to be very careful because these scammers are good and really smart. Several things to be aware of.
Google ads is selling ads to scammers and do not check to see if cattery actually exists. So, any paid google ad should be reviewed with skepticism. The biggest tell of these google advertising fake catteries is their kittens always have names. Like Tiffany and Simon. No mothers or fathers, just kittens with names.
Other things to be aware of would be as follows.
1. Kittens priced below market price. The scammers know what these kittens usually cost and they make them cheap. My kittens are $1800. Scammers will offer kittens for $850. Scammers know people like a deal and take advantage of this.
2. Scammers have lots of kittens immediately available. No breeder I know has kittens immediately available. Not One. Everybody has a wait list. People do not like to wait and the scammers know this. They use immediate availability to lure people in.
3. Scammers offer free shipping. Breaking news folks, free shipping is not free. Someone pays for it. Shipping a kitten can easily cost the price of a kitten. So, if someone is offering free shipping, it is because they have no intention of shipping anything.
4.Until recently, scammers want you to pay for the kitten in advance. And a lot of people did it. And some scammers still try this. But, people are more aware that there are scammers out there, and they should not pay for a kitten in advance. So, the scammers have moved onto asking for a large deposit. Before you send anybody money, ask some questions. Scammers are curiously ignorant about the kittens and puppies they sell. (Ask when was the breed started and by whom? Anything that requires actual knowledge. )
So one of my tech savvy customers investigated the situation and traced one paid google ad for Burmese cats. She traced the add back to a group in the Ukraine who had 40 paid google ads, all for different types of cats and dogs. All the kittens and puppies had names. We contacted them via text, and boom, they responded immediately. And were quite aggressive. Oh, you better move quickly, we have had a lot of interest in "Tiffany" she will probably go today".
Do a compare and contrast. I have the following websites that are filled with content. Lots of content. More content than anybody wants.
I have a name you can google. Do it. Google my name and you will see that I actually exist. Go to our instagram and Facebook and look at all the graduates featured and people with our cats that follow us. We exist. Clearly we exist. I exist. This package, whatever this package is, is something scammers will not have.
So be aware. The scammers are pretty smart about exploiting peoples weaknesses. People want a kitten right now. They offer them as available right now. People like to save money, scammers offer kittens cheap. They know people have often just lost a pet and are eager to replace that pet. Right now. Scammers scam. It's their job, and they are good at it. But, at the end of the day, they are not breeders, and if you scratch the surface, you will find they don't know anything about the kittens or puppies they pretend to sell.
