The Tonkinese of today is a revival, or reconstruction if you prefer, of a cat that existed inextricably in history with cats that, since the early 1900’s, we have chosen to call Burmese and Siamese. The three ‘breeds’ are genetically related and initially they were only distinguishable by their coat-patterns and eye colour, they looked very similar in shape until as late as the 1970s. It must be noted that the Tonkinese is not a hybrid, and may only be called a cross-breed in terms of its deliberate revival in the 1950’s. There are several pictures of such cats in ancient Siamese (Thai) manuscripts. There is also evidence that many of the early cats thought to be Siamese or Burmese were really Tonkinese such as Wong Mau, ancestress of the Burmese breed. Early Siamese breeders saw that some of their cats had greenish-blue eyes with darker bodies than the more familiar Siamese variety. They called these darker cats ‘Chocolate Siamese’. Unfortunately the Chocolate Siamese were not as popular as the alleged ‘Royal’ Siamese with their most unusual sapphire blue eyes and well defined coat-patterns, hence the Chocolates were lost as an individual breed at that time.

From the 1930’s there was much interest in establishing a ‘new’ breed of very attractive brown cats from Dr Joseph Thompson’s Wong Mau, to be called the Burmese. Then in the mid 1950’s American, Milan Greer, began to breed Siamese with Burmese, producing cats that he knew were often discarded from the Burmese or Siamese breeding programmes for supposedly having incorrect coat-patterns. His cats had the intermediate coat-pattern produced by the unique co-dominance of the Burmese (c^b) and Siamese (c^s) coat-pattern genes. Ten years later, Canadian breeder Margaret Conroy and American breeder Jane Barletta conducted their own breeding programmes to produce a cat that combined their ideal attributes of the Burmese and Siamese. What they did was to revive an ancient breed. They were delighted with their cats.  The breed was officially recognised in Canada in 1965 and later in America in 1972 as ‘Tonkinese’, to give them their own identity. In February 2002 the Cat Fanciers Association of America (CFA) granted Championship status to the solid and pointed patterned Tonkinese.

It wasn’t until 1991 that the Governing Council of the Cat Fancy granted the Tonkinese UK recognition. After 10 years of hard work and much success by the Tonkinese, in competition with Championship breeds, the GCCF finally granted us Championship status (June 19th 2002) - and on 1st June 2003 the UK Tonks were able to compete for titles. There are now  many UK Champions, Premiers, Grand Champions and Grand Premiers; at present there is also a UK Grand Premier and an Imperial Grand Premier Tonkinese.

In October 2000 the South African Cats Association granted Preliminary Recognition to the Tonkinese, all due to the hard work of enthusiast and breeder, Jeanine Grobbelaar. Her dedication was rewarded by the Tonkinese promotion to Championship in October 2001.

With the exception of FiFe, Tonks are now recognised by all major pedigree cat organisations.