Welcome to the about page! Here you can find out all about Janzanco Burmese, including the history of Janzanco, the people, the cats, their living quarters, and what to expect from a Janzanco Burmese! So enjoy the page. Simply click on the heading you would like to view and it will appear. Also click on the pictures for a larger version of them!

I fell in love with the first Burmese cat I ever saw, back in 1961 in my early teens. A friend of my brother had bought one for 7 guineas (£7.35) and she was brown, the first brown cat I had ever seen. I wanted one; I cajoled and whined, but my father was not at all keen to part with so much money for a cat.I never forgot that little brown cat and I knew that one day I would have one. I grew up, married and had a daughter and a couple of moggies in the intervening years…..

Then in 1986, my lifelong pal Kate Grantham bought a brown girl, Clareville Firecracker, from Georgina Burdon in Shropshire. Kate and I grew up next door to one another and our parents often bought us similar things for birthday and Christmas – post war, toys etc. were not very plentiful. Well of course, this was the ‘key’ and I had to have one from the same litter! Clareville Billiejean came to live with us disguised as present for my mother who was living with us at that time.

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Georgina gave us every assistance to show Billiejean, pet name Zara, at the Shropshire show at Bridgnorth. The excitement was unbelievable; Zara won the open class, but the PC and Best of Breed were withheld (she had no nosebreak and she had leg bars). At that time, we didn’t understand what those awards were and we didn’t care. She was first! I had my head inside the cage talking to Zara in my best silly cat voice telling her how clever and beautiful she was, when I became aware of a man standing there grinning. I felt embarrassed and the man grinned even wider and he said, “don’t worry, we all do it”. It was at that moment that I knew I had found my ‘slot’ in life – I felt “the bug bite”. I was smitten!!

Zara was shown a few times afterwards, but she always came home with Very Highly Commended or Highly Commended cards – the classes were lots bigger in those days – and I began to realise that she would never achieve high honours on the showbench. I visited lots of shows and asked people lots of questions at the shows about Burmese type, and I decided that I wanted to have a cream Burmese female and breed reds and creams. I had seen Grand Champion Mayrling Red Cloud at shows and thought he was a very handsome boy – I wanted to have him be the father of my first kittens.

Georgina put me in touch with Mary Buckley in Cleveland, and in due course, Cannykits Cream Cherie (pet name Ti-Pu) came to live with us in 1989. She was a stunningly beautiful cat in every way, but she was rather small and this held her back on the showbench in those days. Today, she would have probably won everything! In early 1990, Ti-Pu went down to Worcester to visit Annette and David Quincey’s Red Cloud. On March 16th Ti-Pu gave birth to three red kittens, two boys and a girl. One of the boys really took my eye; I asked David and Annette to come and have a look at the litter, and they both picked out the same red boy as being rather good so I decided to see how the boy, now named Janzanco Reddot Toyboy, (pet name Toby) would fare out on the showbench. He did very well and he won lots of admiration. He was made up to Champion and Grand Champion very quickly. Then I registered him with the Southern Irish Cat Fancy and took him over to Ireland where he quickly made an Irish Champion, thus becoming an International Champion. As far as I know, he was the only International Champion living in the UK at that time. Toby won his first UK Grand Champion Certificate at the Supreme Show in 1992, aged 2 years and 8 months. He was made up to UK Grand Champion in 1996 when he won the class for the second time.

Most of my present day cats ‘come down’ through Reddot Toyboy; the exception is the brown girl that I very wickedly call “The Dragon” Grand Champion Artro Brown Billiejean. (Pet name Aszanu) I adore this girl and although she is very mischievous, she can do no wrong in my eyes! The more naughty and more wilful she is, the more I love her. She makes me laugh and brightens my day and I’m sure she knows it. Aszanu is now 8 years old, and I have one of her grandsons and one of her granddaughters to breed with. Her brown grandson, Janzanco Guy Fawkes – born on 5th November 2002 – (pet name Willow) has just become a father for the first time and I am so delighted…. Aszanu is officially called Brown Billiejean after Clareville Billiejean, because she was born on Zara’s 10th birthday, so it seemed fitting to give her the same name. Willow’s older brown brother, Champion Janzanco Billiejay Karlac, needs just one more certificate to become a Grand Champion; he lives with Paula and Ken Clarke in the North West.

My current red stud boy is Kandikat Red Roddersson (pet name Yanto); his father was Grand Champion Adentbu Red Rodney (pet name Rodders), son of Reddot Toyboy; thus Yanto is Reddot Toyboy’s grandson. Due to family commitments I have not been out to shows over the past 18 months, so most of my current cats are untitled.
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We live in North Worcestershire, quite close to Kidderminster and the beautiful countryside that surrounds it. We live on a hillside and we have far-reaching views across the Severn Valley from the cat’s houses that are laid out on several levels going up the garden. At the very top is the official Burmese Cat Club ‘safe house’ which is used to house Burmese Cats who find themselves in difficulty for whatever reason. Currently, I have a 16 year old female in who has been with me since February this year; her 83 years old died and the cat needed to be rehomed. I am a regional adviser for the Burmese Cat Club and I have a particular interest in welfare matters. I should add at this point that any opinions expressed by me are purely my own observations and they are not the official opinions of the Burmese Cat Club, unless it is expressly stated.

I currently have two active breeding queens and two stud boys; my queens have one litter each per year and the kittens are born in the kitten room upstairs in our house and they are raised in the household as part of the family. A fairly new addition to our ‘brood’ is our 13 months old granddaughter, Madeleine. She has visited a couple of local cat shows already and has shown a definite preference for the red cats present at the show, much to my amusement! She calls me “Me-ow-ow” which makes me smile…. Please feel free to look around the site and to contact me as a breeder/exhibitor of beautiful Burmese Cats, or for advice/help in connection with them.

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