Part 2: Bengals, Throwbacks, Labradors, and Time! This is Changeling, who is an F4. She has the head of an EG cat and especially the LARGE eyes. She sleeps within touching distance, and she can be petted easily from a slight distance. But she really stuggles if I have to pick her up, and she runs and hides wherever there is a sudden or unfamiliar noise. Her temperment is consistent with the cats I had in the first several years of my breeding program. She hasn't been bred in three years, and will be spayed soon.
Labrador retrievers are essentially family animals that, while not nearly cats, are loved by many. But when I was a child (more than half a century ago—no, that can’t be right!) they were a somewhat different creature.a Labs 50 years ago were not quite the great family pets they are today, but with time that changed. Over all those many generations, breeders tended to breed the friendlier dogs because they had an easier time placing the puppies that were friendlier, and today’s Lab is the result.
As I noted in The Friendly Bengal, Part 1, we can make the same leaps Labrador breeders made (without taking half a century!) by consciously choosing to breed only demonstrably friendlyb cats. But our Bengals have one other factor worth considering that no other animal has: their recent descent from the Asian Leopard Cat (ALC).
Behind every Bengal stands one or more ALC(s). The ALC is a small, nocturnal, wild animal. It can be somewhat tamed but cannot be domesticated. Young ALC cubs in captivity may run around like a kitten, but then they mature and wild behavior will prevail. Even those that were born in captivity and hand-raised are still wild animals, and cannot be considered demonstrably friendly.c
The early generation (EG) cats come after the ALC and are also behind every Bengal. EG cats are F1s, which are the children of an ALC-domestic cat cross; F2s, which are the grandchildren of the cross; and F3s, which are the great-grandchildren of that cross. (The males of the crosses are infertile.) The great-great-grandchildren, F4s, I consider to be far enough away from the ALC to be called Bengals, even though some of the males are infertile.
When I started breeding 12 years ago, most of the cats I could get were F3s or F4s. They were much closer to an ALC, and they showed it in temperament! At that time I had the ALCs behind my cats listed, by name, on my site as a part of establishing myself as a serious Bengal breeder and my cats as being BENGALS.
Most Bengals back then were a lot closer to the ALC than they are today, and it was rare not to have an ALC within six generations. Now the breed numbers so many cats that often new breeders have no idea what generation their cats may be.
Remember that our breed is one of the few that consistently breeds back to the source. New ALCs, sometimes with vastly improved health, are being bred to the Bengal. When we keep going back to a wild animal, obviously the process of breeding demonstrably friendly cats must start anew. This is what I believe was happening with the F3s and F4s I started breeding with 12 years ago, and it takes several generations of cats (F5s, F6s, F7s, F8s) before one can have litters that, with socialization, are consistently all friendly, much less demonstrably friendly as defined in The Friendly Bengal, Part I.
It is possible that unfriendly kittens are basically a throwback in temperament to the ALC and its EG descendants, and thus are hard to properly socialize despite their more recent descent from demonstrably friendly cats. (When I say that a Bengal is a throwback, I don’t mean it is vicious and dangerous. The ALC will run away to hide if given any chance at all, and so will a Bengal throwback.) This may be the reason (or one reason) for unfriendly kittens being born from demonstrably friendly parents.
This is one reason why it is so important to select which Bengals to breed based on temperament! And it why with EG cats that the selection for friendliness is most important and can really pay off.
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a At least my (unaccountably) dog-loving friends tell me so—my memory of the Labrador Retrievers of 50+ years ago is virtually non-existent.
b See The Friendly Bengal, Part 1
c Bengal breeders owe a world of thanks to those who breed ALCs to get Bengals.
Copyright January 2012 by Nancy Prince. All rights reserved.
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