History of the Bengal breed

The Bengal cat derived from crossing the Asian leopard cat, Felis bengalensis and in the 50s and in 60s could be purchased in pet stores around the USA as a domestic Shorthair.

Jean Mill, a breeder from California, was the first who did the crossing, which happened by sheer accident and not because she wanted to create a new breed. She had acquired a leopard cat and left her in the company of a black tom cat, so she was not lonely. The leopard cat produced kittens, Mill then decided to mate a girl from the litter with her father and produced a litter of spotted and solid kittens.

Around the same time, Dr. Willard Centerwall crossed an Asian leopard cat with domestic cats at Loyola University. Leopard cats were resistant to the feline leukaemia virus (FLV), so the researchers were interested in determining whether the symptoms of FLV would be transferred to hybrid offspring.

Breeders interested in the development of cats as a separate pedigree breed. Mill was one of them and her circumstances during this time forced her to quit the breeding of cats, but she was ready to start again. She acquired some hybrids from Dr. Centervale and found suitable breeding males. One of them was red-haired house cat, which she found in India, and the other was a brown spotted tabby, which she took from shelter. 

The first cat association to recognise the Bengal as a breed was The International Cat Association (TICA), which provided the experimental status of the breed in 1983, followed by full recognition in 1991. The Bengal cats are also recognised by The American Association of Cat Fanciers, The Canadian Cat Association, and the United Feline Organisation.

It is recommended that Bengal cats should be purchased at least four generations F4 from their wild ancestors the Asian Leopard Cat (ALC).

When you speak about the genetics of the Bengal cat breed, it is always going to revolve around the Filial series (F Series) of the Bengal cat.  The Filial series indicates how far removed the Bengal cat is from the Asian Leopard Cat (ALC).  

As an example, a Bengal cat with an F1 rating means that they are one generation removed from an ALC.  F2 is two generations, F3 is three generations, and so on.  Bengal cats have always been bred in a way where the F1 Bengal females (because the males are infertile this early in the filial line) are bred with male domestic cats to produce F2 Bengals.

To determine the exact genetic makeup of a Bengal cat is not a simple thing to do because once an ALC is bred with a female domestic cat, its genetic makeup is half of the domestic and half of the ALC.  

From there, the breed will mate the F1 Bengal with another domestic, essentially making the cat 25% ALC and 75% domestic.  

To help understand this more simply, please view the table below.

Bengal cats are a unique breed because, although domesticated, they still have traces of their wild ancestry from the Asian Leopard Cat (ALC).  All the physical characteristics of a Bengal cat are dependent on how far removed the cat is from the ALC.  

For example, if you have an F1 Bengal cat (1st generation) then this cat would be much larger in size than most domestic cats and more importantly its general behaviour will be that of a wild cat and will be constantly spraying everywhere. It would be difficult to train an F1 Bengal cat.  It is extremely unlikely that most people will adopt anything close to an F1, other than a 6th generation Bengal cat, so the information is reflective of that.   

The average size of a domesticated Bengal cat is no larger than most other domestic cats you would find. Somewhere between 8-12 lbs is normal and the closer you get to an F1 rating, the larger they are. Full grown F1 Bengal cats can weigh as much as 30lbs, which is about double the size of a regular cat.  

On average, the Asian leopard Cat is as large as a Domestic Cat, but there are considerable regional differences: in Indonesia, the average size is 45 cm (18 in), plus 20 cm (8 in) tail, while it is 60 cm/40 cm (24/16 in) in the Amur region. The shoulder height is 41 cm (16 in) and the weight is 4.5-6.8 kg (10-15 lbs), similar in size to a Domestic Cat.