The Burmese is a breed of domesticated cat

Cat

The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...

s split into two subgroups: the American Burmese and the British Burmese (and are not to be confused with "Sacred Cat of Burma," in respect of which, see Birman

Birman

The Birman is a domestic cat breed. Also called the "Sacred Cat of Burma", it is not to be confused with the Burmese, which is a separate and dissimilar breed. The Birman has medium-long hair, a pale colored body and darker points with deep blue eyes. Even though the cat is pointed, the paws have...

). Most modern Burmese are descendants of one female cat called Wong Mau, which was brought from Burma to America in 1930. Most cat registries

Cat registry

A cat registry is an organisation that registers cats for exhibition and breeding purposes. A cat registry stores the pedigrees of cats, prefixes or affixes of catteries, studbooks , breed descriptions and the standards of points for those breeds; lists of judges qualified to judge at shows run...

 do not recognise a split between the two groups, but those that do formally refer to the type developed by British cat breeders as the European Burmese.

Originally, Burmese cats were exclusively brown (sable

Sable

The sable is a species of marten which inhabits forest environments, primarily in Russia from the Ural Mountains throughout Siberia, in northern Mongolia and China and on Hokkaidō in Japan. Its range in the wild originally extended through European Russia to Poland and Scandinavia...

), but years of selective breeding have produced a wide variety of colours.