Salsa's site

ALC Taro of Bundas.

Glowing Eyes Salsa.

Glowing Eyes Salsa is our spectacular Bengal cat and she was born the 26th of December 2005 and she is born in a litter of three (two girls and one boy). Mom's name is Milleniets Mithril and dad is Gaylee King of Bonnea. Salsa has brown spots, white cheeks, small ears, white belly and a short , thick tale and lots of glitter in her fur. Salsa loves to climb and has her own climbing frame in the living room that goes all the way up to the ceiling, where she lies on the top and enjoys life. In the summer she is outside in her exercise yard, where she can climb in branches.

Salsa loves everything that goes on around her and she follows me around the house all day long. That's why her nickname is "The assistant". If I'm sitting down, she takes a nap. At night she is lying under the quilt in our bed, except on the hottest days in the summer. Then she prefers to lie on the top of the quilt. Salsa has two rooms in the house she loves to be in. The bedroom is one of them and the other is the bathroom. If you really want to hear her loud purring, you have to go to the bathroom with her.

Click on the albums.

Salsa's pedigree.

Jean S. Mill.

Short about the Bengal.

In 1965 Jean Sugden carried out (later Jean S. Mill) the first experiments of crossbreeding the domesticated cat and Asiatic leopard cat (Felis Bengalensis) (ALC) in Arizona, USA.
Hun had a female ALC and didn't believe it was possible to crossbreed this with a domestic cat, but the result was a spotted female cat with the name Kinkin, and she got a litter of kittens (one spotted and one black). This was the foundation to breed a cat with an exotic look to reduce the need for wild animals as pets. This line stopped after three years because of death in the family. Other ALC owners crossbred and got hybrid cats. One of them was Dr. Willard Centerwall (Loyola University). He was a researcher on the cat disease leukos, a kind of viral blood cancer. Wild cats are immune to this disease. Therefore they crossbred the ALC with shorthaired tabby housecats to study the immune defence against leukos in the offspring. Later on Jean S. Mill got some of those cats and many of the bengals today can be retraced back to the Centerwall hybrids.
The first generations are called hybrids because they are a mix of two kinds of species. The first generation is called F-1 and only the females are fertile, which again is crossbred with a domestic cat and the offspring is called F-2. This goes on until the fourth generation (F-4). After that the Bengal cat is a pure breed.
Several breeds have been used in the process, among them are Abyssian, Egyptian Mau and Burmese. Jean S. Mill imported a spotted cat from India, "Tory of Delhi", that supplied the breed with glitter in the fur.
After many generations the breed has got stabile temperament and the males are fertile. In 1991 the breed was approved by TICA (The International Cat Association) and the Bengal cat came to Scandinavia in 1995.
The Bengal is a playful cat his whole life and is clever to play by himself. The Bengal follows his owner around in the house to be sure that he don't miss anything. The Bengal is fairly engaged with water. Some confine themselves to splash the paw into the water bowl, some will like to drink from the water tap, while others rather goes into the shower while you are there.
The Bengal cat is a intelligent cat and you can teach it simple tricks as retrieval.