We’re Kyilain Birmans
“You’re who now?” we hear you say.
Kyilain, pronounced ‘chi-lane’ is Burmese for ‘crystal’ or ‘clear’.
Our Birman story began in April 2013 when we found out via our local vets that an elderly lady was having to have her cats re-homed. There were three cats, two British Blues and a Birman. The Birman was an 18 year old named Crystal. When we saw the photo of her our lives were changed forever.
Crystal in April 2013
Knowing that Crystal was in her twilight years we thought we’d get a Birman kitten, ideally to keep Chrissy company but also to soften the inevitable blow of eventually losing her to old age.
We contacted our most local Birman breeder, a lady called Pam who had bred for years. One of her cats was about to have kittens so we put our name down for one of them and waited a few weeks to be able to go and visit.
We didn’t even have a car at the time, so we had to get a friend to drive us to the lady’s house where her cats lived with her. Crystal was not overly friendly at first, but we knew we wanted to help her out in any way we could. The old lady’s daughter was happy that we wanted to take Crystal and handed us a package. “It’s a roast chicken”, she said. “Crystal doesn’t eat cat food and only eats roast chicken. So I cooked you this so you have something to feed her”.
“Oh thanks” was our reply, both of us thinking that we’d have her on cat food in no time.
With that, the adventure started. Crystal, or Chrissy as she became known, was the most stubborn old lady that you can imagine. She didn’t eat cat food, ever. We did manage to get her to eat ham, as well as chicken and she was also partial to chip shop fish. But she never ate cat food. Being an elderly lady Crystal would sleep a lot, but we found out that she liked playing with string and exploring the landing area outside our flat door. It was clear that she’d had many adventures in her long life and now wanted to have a relaxing time, mostly sleeping on Keri’s pillow.
