Personality
The longhair Burmilla is bright and funloving, but more laid back than its shorthair relative in most cases. It is an ideal cat for single people or families, being quite happy to wait until you come home for attention. They are not demanding cat, but still love to spend as much time with you as possible.
Many of them are very good “fetch-it” cats too!
Appearance
In Australia, the breed has developed with an emphasis on the quality of the silver pattern being very important. Ideally, the coat should have a silver base with a band of colour on the end of the strand of hair. A deeper proportion of colour on the hair strand results in a shaded coat rather than the pale effect of a tipped (Chinchilla) pattern. It is most important that this pattern be evenly distributed over the coat and that there be no tarnishing of the silver – called ‘rufussing’ it appears as areas of reddish colour marring the silver.
The colour of the tips should reflect the colours of the cats allowable in the programme – black, brown, chocolate, blue and lilac with the red, cream and tortoiseshell colours allowable under the ACF Burmilla standard, as they are in Europe. The longhair coat should be a fine and silky coat, medium long, except over the shoulders and without a woolly undercoat. Ear tufts and furnishings are preferable.
Breed History
The Tiffanie (Longhaired Burmilla) is an elegant and beautiful breed developed from the shorthair Burmilla programme, which began with an accidental mating between a Burmese and a Chinchilla in the UK. It combines a longer but still relatively easy care silver coat with the delightful personality combination of clever affectionate Burmese and easy going sweet tempered Chinchilla. The breed was developed by using the naturally occurring longhairs that came through the shorthair programme, and by crossing back to Chinchilla in the early generations.
Called an Australian Tiffanie in the early days, the breed is now developing more in line with the Burmilla programme and in most of the major groups in Australia it is referred to as the Burmilla Longhair. This has encouraged breeders to keep the breed type truer to the Burmilla standard and benefits the breed by using the larger gene pool available in the shorthair programme.