You may have heard that all cats hate water – and many do – but that’s not true for every breed. We Bengals absolutely love water! My ancestors were wild Asian leopard cats, which human scientists call Prionailurus bengalensis – hence the name Bengal! They originally lived in the jungle, where they were excellent climbers and swimmers. Even though we Bengals are out of the jungle and prrrfectly happy as house cats, we kept some of our wild cat traits, and loving water is one of them. Don’t be surprised if I try to join you in the bath or shower and drink from the faucet – I’d keep your toilet seats down if I were you! Just a warning: my love of water combined with my high prey drive made my ancestors great at hunting and fishing, so if you keep fish as pets, I’m probably not the kitty for you!

We Bengals are a relatively new breed with a pawsitively fascinating origin story. In 1963, a breeder from California named Jean Mill unintentionally bred a wild Asian leopard cat with a domestic shorthair. Unlike today, in the 1950s and 1960s, humans could actually buy wild cats in pet stores! Jean Mill owned a leopard who she believed was lonely, so she found her a friend – a black tomcat – and to Mill’s surprise, they created a litter of hybrid kittens! Not long after Jean Mill created my earliest ancestors, a scientist named Dr. Willard Centerwall was doing the same in his laboratory at Loyola University. In the 1970s, Dr. Centerwall was breeding leopard cats with domestic cats in order to study their genetics because wild leopard cats had some immunity to feline leukemia. After the study was completed, some of Dr. Centerwall’s hybrids ended up with Jean Mill, and she began a serious breeding program that resulted in Bengal cats as we are today. Not everyone was happy about us, though. The earliest Bengals (the first three generations) were not accepted or recognized as purebred by cat societies. It was only much later, when fourth generation Bengals were bred together, that a Bengal could be considered a fully domesticated purebred cat. The first organization to officially recognize our breed was The International Cat Association (TICA) in 1983. It took until 2016 for the Cat Fanciers Association (CFA) to recognize us, and even then we had to be at least 6 generations removed from our wild leopard ancestors! Today, we are fully accepted by everyone and make a loving (and maybe a bit rambunctious) addition to your family. While we retain the furbulous looks of our ancestors, our personality is full-on house cat.