Bengal

🌍 Overview

The Bengal cat is a hybrid breed produced by crossing domestic cats with the Asian leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis), a small wild felid native to South and East Asia. The result is a striking, athletic cat with a wild spotted coat and a highly active temperament. Early-generation hybrids can be difficult to manage; F4 and later generations are fully domestic but retain their wild appearance and high energy, requiring extensive enrichment to prevent problem behaviors.

📋 Quick Facts

📜 History

The breed came out of a laboratory as much as a cattery. Jean Mill made the first documented cross between a domestic cat and an Asian leopard cat in 1963 in Yuma, Arizona. In 1975 the physician Willard Centerwall gave her a group of hybrids left over from his Loma Linda research into whether the leopard cat's resistance to feline leukemia virus could pass to its offspring, and those cats became the breeding base. Mill later added a spotted street tom collected from the rhinoceros enclosure at the New Delhi zoo in 1982, registered as Millwood Tory of Delhi. TICA accepted the Bengal as a new breed in 1986 and granted it championship status in 1991.

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