Finding Mod Daeng

Saturday, July 3rd was the day I first met a very special kitty - a little female who has traveled halfway across the globe from Bangkok, Thailand. She is already somewhat of a world traveler. Her journey has taken her from Thailand to the Midwestern United States, briefly to Minnesota, and finally to California. And I also traveled to meet her, flying from the San Francisco Bay Area down to Los Angeles and back in one day to pick her up and bring her home to live with me for a while.

What is so special about this kitty? Her name is Mod Daeng, which in Thai means "red (or copper) ant." She is a Suphalak. Not familiar with that breed of cat? You probably are - around the world, outside of Southeast Asia, this breed is well known as Burmese. Although the mother of the Burmese breed came from Rangoon, Burma (now called Yangon, Myanmar) the Burmese breed probably originated in Thailand. Ancient Thai poems and paintings of what have also been called "copper cats" or Thong Daeng show the breed has lived around Thai temples since at least the 1300s, and probably a lot longer than that. Other breeds that come from this area include Siamese (Wichien-Maat, which can be translated as "diamond gold"), Korats (Korat is a region in Thailand, and these cats are also known as Si-Sawat, meaning "color of the sawat seed,"), and a white odd-eyed cat breed known as Khao Manee ("white gem").

Although the four breeds of cats mentioned above are considered national cats by Thailand, which has issued postage stamps honoring these breeds, Suphalaks are becoming increasingly rare in Southeast Asia. While Suphalaks can be seen on the streets of Bangkok, and some reputable breeders of these cats do exist, the more popular breeds are the Korats and Siamese, and therefore fewer breeders raise Suphalaks. It is also difficult to establish relationships with breeders in Thailand from such a great distance, and I believe the Thai people like to get to know you before doing business, which is understandable. So being able to obtain and bring a Suphalak to the United States is a challenge.

We are very fortunate, however, in that Burmese breeders from the Midwest, Renee Weinberger and J. D. Blythin, traveled to Bangkok in February 2010 in search of Suphalaks. Thanks to introductions through another breeder who has traveled many times to Thailand to bring Wichien Maats over to the US, Dr. Cristy Bird, and the author of the definitive history of Siamese cats ("Siamese Cats; Legends and Reality"), Dr. Martin Clutterbuck, Renee and J. D. were able to obtain Mod Daeng from the Areerat cattery in Bangkok and bring her to the United States. Mod Daeng stayed with Renee and J. D. for some months as she was quarantined, tested, and treated to assure that she was healthy and not carrying any diseases that might infect our American Burmese. And now, because Renee and J. D. are expecting a baby, Mod Daeng has come to live with me temporarily.

Mod Daeng is only eight months old, but there are high expectations resting on her silky brown shoulders. She was brought to this country to help the American Burmese cat. All pedigreed cats are inbred to a certain extent, in order to develop and establish a particular look or "type" for a breed. However, recent studies have shown that Burmese and Singapuras in the United States have the lowest genetic diversity of all cat breeds. Low genetic diversity is not good for any breed, and so the plan is to breed Mod Daeng and share her offspring with our fellow breeders, to instill in Burmese breeding lines fresh genes from the country where our breed originated. This is not the only step that will be taken to help with that effort, but it is one of the first.

All Burmese around the world, outside of Southeast Asia, are descended from a single female cat that was brought from Burma to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1930. Her name was Wong Mau, and her owner, Dr. Joseph Thompson, believed she was a new breed of cat. He worked with a geneticist, Billie Gerst, from Palo Alto, California. This was the first time a cat breed was developed with the help of a geneticist. Looking back at the records of their breedings, it is likely that Wong Mau was not actually a "pure" Burmese, but a mink Suphalak. In the west, many would now call her a "Tonkinese", however in Thailand for hundreds of years these Suphalaks have been bred and they come in two varieties - Sepia (which has the darker coat that we see in Burmese in the west) and Mink (which is a lighter color and carries a Siamese color gene in addition to Burmese genes). For the Western world the Sepia Burmese descendants of Wong Mau that Gerst and Thompson produced were in fact a new breed. And from this single cat a love affair began with these little brown cats that, in the decades following Wong Mau's journey from Burma to California, have themselves spread across the world.

I feel extremely fortunate to be the first breeder to work with Mod Daeng, in the hope that she will produce healthy babies that will help our breed. And I find it a wonderful irony that not only do I live in the area where the breed was first developed, but Mod Daeng herself also has turned out to be a Mink, like her distant cousin who traveled here so long ago. Renee and J.D. had hoped to obtain a Sepia Suphalak, but through genetic analysis at UC Davis Mod Daeng has indeed tested "mink," which means she has both Siamese and Burmese genes. She also has a very different look from the Burmese most of us know today, and our challenge will be to work with her lines not only for healthy genetic diversity, but also to develop in her descendants the type that we know and love in this country.

What is she like in appearance and personality? That will be covered in my next blog, "Meeting Mod Daeng". I hope you will enjoy taking this journey with me and Mod Daeng. I will do my best to post regularly and to provide interesting and accurate information along the way.