July 16, 2025 • 12 mins
Bengal cats are gorgeous animals, but they are bought and sold on the designer pet market, so booo. Learn about these hybrid kitties today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
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,
because that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
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
(01:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
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
(01:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
You just did what I do. You added a whole
bowel in there.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Well, why don't you take the next one because that.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
One's easy wild leopard cat.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, no, I meant the other lineage.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
The house cat Felis cattus.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
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
(02:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Common crossword clue by the way, agletz great.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
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?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I say, we keep going. We're only a few minutes in.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Okay, well, let's talk about Willard center Wall. Then.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
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
(03:46):
with hybridizing these cats to see what he could learn
about this scientifically speaking, to help save cats.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
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
(04:13):
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
(04:34):
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
(04:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
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
(05:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
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
(06:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
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
(07:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
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
(08:06):
sleep all day like other cats. Apparently they like to swim,
which is very unique for cats.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Right. Yeah, they're into water related activities like swimming, showering
with their owners. Yeah I had wakeboarding.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
But yes I stepped on it. That was even better.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I stepped on yours too, So there.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Although kneboard a knee boarding cat. Maybe that's the best joke.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
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
(08:51):
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
(09:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I'm surprised, that's all.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Yeah, I guess I could.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
See breeders charging way more than that. I'm really surprised. Yeah,
that's a value.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
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
(10:13):
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,
(10:37):
please don't support this kind of thing. Do not buy
hybrid cats.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Oh well, unless it's uh they're doing like an adoption
event on the sidewalk, it's.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
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
(11:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
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
they have their tongue permanently out.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
They have a non retractable tongue.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
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,
because that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
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
(01:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
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
(01:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
You just did what I do. You added a whole
bowel in there.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Well, why don't you take the next one because that.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
One's easy wild leopard cat.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, no, I meant the other lineage.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
The house cat Felis cattus.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
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
(02:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Common crossword clue by the way, agletz great.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
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?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I say, we keep going. We're only a few minutes in.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Okay, well, let's talk about Willard center Wall. Then.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
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
(03:46):
with hybridizing these cats to see what he could learn
about this scientifically speaking, to help save cats.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
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
(04:13):
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
(04:34):
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
(04:55):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
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
(05:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
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
(06:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
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
(07:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
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
(08:06):
sleep all day like other cats. Apparently they like to swim,
which is very unique for cats.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Right. Yeah, they're into water related activities like swimming, showering
with their owners. Yeah I had wakeboarding.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
But yes I stepped on it. That was even better.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I stepped on yours too, So there.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Although kneboard a knee boarding cat. Maybe that's the best joke.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
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
(08:51):
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
(09:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I'm surprised, that's all.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Yeah, I guess I could.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
See breeders charging way more than that. I'm really surprised. Yeah,
that's a value.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
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
(10:13):
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,
(10:37):
please don't support this kind of thing. Do not buy
hybrid cats.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Oh well, unless it's uh they're doing like an adoption
event on the sidewalk, it's.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
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
(11:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
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
they have their tongue permanently out.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
They have a non retractable tongue.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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