¶ Intro / Opening
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. Jerry's here too. Dave's not, but Jerry's here for Dave. You know, the whole rigamar role. It's time for short stuff, so let's go. Yeah, so, Chuck, I'm glad you did that because I think that was a really great segue into this episode on a specific kind of.
Cats, that's right, we're talking about the Bengal cat. If you've ever seen a Bengal cat, or if you look up a picture online now when it's safe, it looks like a cross between a leopard and a house cat,
¶ Introduction to Bengal Cats
because that's what it is.
Yeah, full stop. I mean, it's kind of nuts, but there is a small wild leopard cat out there in southern and Eastern Asia, Priona ilrius bengalisis bengalensis. I got it in there somewhere. Maybe Jerry can chop all that up and edit it into the correct pronunciation. But it's a tiny little cat that looks a lot like a leopard, and it is a wild cat. It's not a leopard. It's not even related to the leopard, but it's one half of this type of hybridized breed of cats. That people keep as pets today.
Yeah, that people pay a lot of money for I imagine. So, yeah, they are very wilful, athletic cats, and we'll kind of get to their behavior later. But let's go back about six million years to talk about how cats came to be. There were a couple of groups of felines that that parted ways. There was a very you know, just sort of a regular, small bodied cat that was eventually the common ancestor of both of these groups. One became the one that you talked about, the Prionelaris. Nope, yeah, I
mean those close touris. Okay, maybe Bengalensis. No, Bengalensis.
You just did what I do. You added a whole bowel in there.
Well, why don't you take the next one because that.
One's easy wild leopard cat.
Well, no, I meant the other lineage.
The house cat Felis cattus.
Yeah, exactly. So those are the two lines. The Felis cattus is what we most of us have in our home set have cats. But that other one, that leopard cat is lives in southern and eastern Asia. Like you said, it's a wild cat. It prowls the forest and grasslands. And stuff like that. And they're not huge. They're six and a half pounds to maybe fifteen and a half pounds.
And although they look like a leopard, they're you know, like you said, they're clearly not they're they're they're small by comparison.
No, but like a leopard, they're covered in rosettes. That's what leopard spots are called. And then the little the little plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called agltz. You know those two.
Common crossword clue by the way, agletz great.
But yeah, if you know those two things, you don't need to know anything else in the world because they'll just kind of open up all the doors you need from that point on.
That's right.
But rosettes there the little patches of for the little spots that leopards have, and that's one of the main characteristics of the Bengal cat hybrid breed. Do you want to take an early break or do you want to keep going? What do you think?
I say, we keep going. We're only a few minutes in.
Okay, well, let's talk about Willard center Wall. Then.
Yeah, this is a guy that is initially responsible for this crossbreed. Because in nineteen seventy one, when he was a professor at Lomlinda University in California, he was working on trying to solve feline leukemia, and apparently that Bengal cat is resistant to feline leukemia. So he started working with hybridizing these cats to see what he could learn about this scientifically speaking, to help save cats.
¶ The Origin Story of the Breed
Yeah, and we should say, I mean, there's a lot of people who are very not happy with the idea that people are highizing cats and creating designer cat breeds when there's tons of shelter cats that need to be adopted. Wow. Yeah. Willard center Wall, though he seems to have just did this innocently, like he wasn't trying to create a new designer breed of cat that he could sell. He was
doing it for scientific research. Enter another breeder, Gene Mill, who actually was a purposeful breeder of this new hybrid breed of cats what became the Bengal cat. She collaborated with center Wall, and she was a conservationist. And that won't make any sense for a little while, but will
I'll bring it in now. The reason that she, a conservationist, was involved in creating a hybridized cat was because she thought that if you got little cats out there that looked like leopards, it would make people more empathetic toward leopards in the wild, and hence would dry up the market for leopard skin coats and may even help conserve wild leopard populations because people adopted like what looked like a little baby leopard at home.
Yeah, and it has not lost on us that her last name was mil Save your email and we'll mention one more guy before we break. A breeder named Bill Engler, who is a zoo keeper and animal importer, worked a lot with exotic animals, and he had a leopard cat named Shah in the early seventies, and he breeded them and created a bunch of Bengal kittens. And I don't believe this, but people have surmised, because his name was Bill Engler, that the name ben Ingele came from b Engler.
But I think it's clearly from that Asian leopard cat's name, so.
Much so that I don't know why people even came up with the other idea. Agreed, I think that's break time. Huh, Yeah, let's do it. We'll be right back.
So these cats, even though I'm completely against this kind of thing and selling pets like this at like for too grand a pop. They're amazing looking. They're incredible. They're gorgeous, little tiny leopards. The rosettes can take various forms. They can be kind of pointy, they can kind of look like arrowheads. They can be more circular, they can look like pawprints. The marble coated Bengal is one of the
coolest looking cats I've ever seen. But again, I don't want to sound like I'm endorsing this kind of thing, you know, no.
But I mean, like, these things do exist, and they are beautiful to look at, and they do seem like pretty interesting cats as far as cats go, their personalities and what they demand from you. I was gonna say require, but it seems like a demand. They're also different colored. They have different colored coats beneath their rosettes too, all the way up to white, which imitates snow leopards, so it looks like a mini baby snow leopard essentially running
around your house. They also have like brown, golden, charcoal, gray, silverish, and all these different rosette combinations with different coat combinations means that there's an infinite variety of Bengal kittens just waiting to be bred.
Yeah, they are muscular, they're very athletic. Apparently their hind legs are a little taller than the shoulder, so they look even a little different than your regular house cat. They weigh just sort of like the ones in the wild, eight to fifteen pounds, which is and be small for a cat. And they're, like I said, they're very energetic. They like to take walks. They don't lay around and sleep all day like other cats. Apparently they like to swim, which is very unique for cats.
Right. Yeah, they're into water related activities like swimming, showering with their owners. Yeah I had wakeboarding.
But yes I stepped on it. That was even better.
I stepped on yours too, So there.
Although kneboard a knee boarding cat. Maybe that's the best joke.
I thought in kneeboarding too. I workshopped it very briefly with myself and said wakeboarding, So the way do you go? The thing is is a lot of people buy these things and they're like, uh, it's gonna go with my purse. I'm gonna carry this cat around whenever I have my purse and then probably ignore it the rest of the time. I have it they're buying these cats for their looks essentially, which is I mean the kind of one of the
¶ Unique Characteristics and Temperament
things that that they're bred for is their looks. The problem is, even if they're expecting, like this is a cat I'm going to take care of, most people are totally unprepared for just how different Bengal cats are from your average cat. Like you said, all the stamina, all the If they get bored, they're very aggressive. So you don't want them to get bored because just say bye bye to your Aaron's rent furniture, right, yeah, Like you're
like you are, You're you're in for it. If you buy a Bengal cat and take it as your own, you it's just going to be way more work than the average cat, which can usually amuse itself. So a lot of people buy two to keep them busy with one another.
Yeah, uh yeah, And I guess they have a lot of money because I saw that snow leopard version can go for like two grand.
I'm surprised, that's all.
Yeah, I guess I could.
See breeders charging way more than that. I'm really surprised. Yeah, that's a value.
Apparently if they have wild parents or grandparents, it's even worse and they require even more socialization than you know, which makes sense than the ones who are further removed from that wild lineage. And I looked up online because
this article from how Stuff Works. I'm not sure when it was, but it said like Hawaii as a state has put a band on breeding and ownership, and then so I looked up and there there are quite a few states that either have outright bands on ownerships or bands on breeding or both, or if they don't have bands, they have a lot of like you have to have a permit and like hoops you have to jump through
to get one of these things right. So, yeah, people are kind of standing up and or you know, cat rescue organizations are obviously standing on their podium and screaming like, please don't support this kind of thing. Do not buy hybrid cats.
Yeah, if you ever drift drive past a strip mall and it says cats or puppies or something kittens on a sign, you want to keep driving.
Oh well, unless it's uh they're doing like an adoption event on the sidewalk, it's.
A little different. I'm talking more like a permanent sign. Yeah, yeah, sign I try to put up like on the shopping centers directory.
Yeah yeah. I just wanted to draw that distinction because that's what they will often do, is set up in front of like pet COO or something.
Yeah you mean. And I were looking once at a pet co before we got MO, and there was there were dogs they had. It was so sad. They had dogs that had all different kinds of special needs or handicaps, kind of sequestered off from the other dogs. And among these dogs there was a little Chihuahua and apparently the only thing unusual about him was that he couldn't retract his tongue, so his tongue was always sticking out and you had to keep a tongue moist. Yeah, it looks
super cute like it was. That's just always stuck with me.
Yeah, I mean, there's there's a breed of dog that has that tongue out full time, right. I don't know that. I think that like the supposedly ugliest dog on earth, that breed whatever it is that is like patchy hair and looks kind of crazy and has it. I think
¶ The Ethics of Breeding and Ownership
they have their tongue permanently out.
They have a non retractable tongue.
I guess, so I'll look at should do a short stuff on that dog because I don't like some calling an animal the ugliest whatever.
No, that sounds kind of Internet clickbaity, you know, Yeah, I agreed. All right, Well I think we're at the end of Bengal cats. Eh. Yes, okay, see you guys, Short Stuff's out.
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