A beautiful cat deserves a beautiful legend of origin. The Sacred Cat of Burma, as the Birman is sometimes called, is said to have acquired his striking appearance through the intervention of a blue-eyed goddess, who rewarded a temple cat’s love for and devotion to his priest by turning his white coat golden and changing his yellow eyes to blue. His paws remained white as a symbol of his purity. Ever since, the temple cats have borne the goddess’s marks of favor, and it was said that priests who died were reborn into the cats’ bodies.