Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Speaker 1: Jerry's here too. Dave's not, but Jerry's here for Dave.
Speaker 1: You know, the whole rigamar role. It's time for short stuff,
Speaker 1: so let's go. Yeah, so, Chuck, I'm glad you did
Speaker 1: that because I think that was a really great segue
Speaker 1: into this episode on a specific kind of.
Speaker 2: Cats, that's right, we're talking about the Bengal cat. If
Speaker 2: you've ever seen a Bengal cat, or if you look
Speaker 2: up a picture online now when it's safe, it looks
Speaker 2: like a cross between a leopard and a house cat,
Speaker 2: because that's what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, full stop. I mean, it's kind of nuts, but
Speaker 1: there is a small wild leopard cat out there in
Speaker 1: southern and Eastern Asia, Priona ilrius bengalisis bengalensis. I got
Speaker 1: it in there somewhere. Maybe Jerry can chop all that
Speaker 1: up and edit it into the correct pronunciation. But it's
Speaker 1: a tiny little cat that looks a lot like a leopard,
Speaker 1: and it is a wild cat. It's not a leopard.
Speaker 1: It's not even related to the leopard, but it's one
Speaker 1: half of this type of hybridized breed of cats. That
Speaker 1: people keep as pets today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that people pay a lot of money for I imagine. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: they are very wilful, athletic cats, and we'll kind of
Speaker 2: get to their behavior later. But let's go back about
Speaker 2: six million years to talk about how cats came to be.
Speaker 2: There were a couple of groups of felines that that
Speaker 2: parted ways. There was a very you know, just sort
Speaker 2: of a regular, small bodied cat that was eventually the
Speaker 2: common ancestor of both of these groups. One became the
Speaker 2: one that you talked about, the Prionelaris. Nope, yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean those close touris. Okay, maybe Bengalensis. No, Bengalensis.
Speaker 1: You just did what I do. You added a whole
Speaker 1: bowel in there.
Speaker 2: Well, why don't you take the next one because that.
Speaker 1: One's easy wild leopard cat.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I meant the other lineage.
Speaker 1: The house cat Felis cattus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So those are the two lines. The Felis
Speaker 2: cattus is what we most of us have in our
Speaker 2: home set have cats. But that other one, that leopard
Speaker 2: cat is lives in southern and eastern Asia. Like you said,
Speaker 2: it's a wild cat. It prowls the forest and grasslands.
Speaker 2: And stuff like that. And they're not huge. They're six
Speaker 2: and a half pounds to maybe fifteen and a half pounds.
Speaker 2: And although they look like a leopard, they're you know,
Speaker 2: like you said, they're clearly not they're they're they're small
Speaker 2: by comparison.
Speaker 1: No, but like a leopard, they're covered in rosettes. That's
Speaker 1: what leopard spots are called. And then the little the
Speaker 1: little plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called agltz.
Speaker 1: You know those two.
Speaker 2: Common crossword clue by the way, agletz great.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you know those two things, you don't
Speaker 1: need to know anything else in the world because they'll
Speaker 1: just kind of open up all the doors you need
Speaker 1: from that point on.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: But rosettes there the little patches of for the little
Speaker 1: spots that leopards have, and that's one of the main
Speaker 1: characteristics of the Bengal cat hybrid breed. Do you want
Speaker 1: to take an early break or do you want to
Speaker 1: keep going? What do you think?
Speaker 2: I say, we keep going. We're only a few minutes in.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's talk about Willard center Wall. Then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a guy that is initially responsible for
Speaker 2: this crossbreed. Because in nineteen seventy one, when he was
Speaker 2: a professor at Lomlinda University in California, he was working
Speaker 2: on trying to solve feline leukemia, and apparently that Bengal
Speaker 2: cat is resistant to feline leukemia. So he started working
Speaker 2: with hybridizing these cats to see what he could learn
Speaker 2: about this scientifically speaking, to help save cats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we should say, I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are very not happy with the idea
Speaker 1: that people are highizing cats and creating designer cat breeds
Speaker 1: when there's tons of shelter cats that need to be adopted. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Willard center Wall, though he seems to have just did
Speaker 1: this innocently, like he wasn't trying to create a new
Speaker 1: designer breed of cat that he could sell. He was
Speaker 1: doing it for scientific research. Enter another breeder, Gene Mill,
Speaker 1: who actually was a purposeful breeder of this new hybrid
Speaker 1: breed of cats what became the Bengal cat. She collaborated
Speaker 1: with center Wall, and she was a conservationist. And that
Speaker 1: won't make any sense for a little while, but will
Speaker 1: I'll bring it in now. The reason that she, a conservationist,
Speaker 1: was involved in creating a hybridized cat was because she
Speaker 1: thought that if you got little cats out there that
Speaker 1: looked like leopards, it would make people more empathetic toward
Speaker 1: leopards in the wild, and hence would dry up the
Speaker 1: market for leopard skin coats and may even help conserve
Speaker 1: wild leopard populations because people adopted like what looked like
Speaker 1: a little baby leopard at home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it has not lost on us that her
Speaker 2: last name was mil Save your email and we'll mention
Speaker 2: one more guy before we break. A breeder named Bill Engler,
Speaker 2: who is a zoo keeper and animal importer, worked a
Speaker 2: lot with exotic animals, and he had a leopard cat
Speaker 2: named Shah in the early seventies, and he breeded them
Speaker 2: and created a bunch of Bengal kittens. And I don't
Speaker 2: believe this, but people have surmised, because his name was
Speaker 2: Bill Engler, that the name ben Ingele came from b Engler.
Speaker 2: But I think it's clearly from that Asian leopard cat's name, so.
Speaker 1: Much so that I don't know why people even came
Speaker 1: up with the other idea. Agreed, I think that's break time. Huh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: So these cats, even though I'm completely against this kind
Speaker 2: of thing and selling pets like this at like for
Speaker 2: too grand a pop. They're amazing looking. They're incredible. They're gorgeous,
Speaker 2: little tiny leopards. The rosettes can take various forms. They
Speaker 2: can be kind of pointy, they can kind of look
Speaker 2: like arrowheads. They can be more circular, they can look
Speaker 2: like pawprints. The marble coated Bengal is one of the
Speaker 2: coolest looking cats I've ever seen. But again, I don't
Speaker 2: want to sound like I'm endorsing this kind of thing,
Speaker 2: you know, no.
Speaker 1: But I mean, like, these things do exist, and they
Speaker 1: are beautiful to look at, and they do seem like
Speaker 1: pretty interesting cats as far as cats go, their personalities
Speaker 1: and what they demand from you. I was gonna say require,
Speaker 1: but it seems like a demand. They're also different colored.
Speaker 1: They have different colored coats beneath their rosettes too, all
Speaker 1: the way up to white, which imitates snow leopards, so
Speaker 1: it looks like a mini baby snow leopard essentially running
Speaker 1: around your house. They also have like brown, golden, charcoal, gray, silverish,
Speaker 1: and all these different rosette combinations with different coat combinations
Speaker 1: means that there's an infinite variety of Bengal kittens just
Speaker 1: waiting to be bred.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are muscular, they're very athletic. Apparently their hind
Speaker 2: legs are a little taller than the shoulder, so they
Speaker 2: look even a little different than your regular house cat.
Speaker 2: They weigh just sort of like the ones in the wild,
Speaker 2: eight to fifteen pounds, which is and be small for
Speaker 2: a cat. And they're, like I said, they're very energetic.
Speaker 2: They like to take walks. They don't lay around and
Speaker 2: sleep all day like other cats. Apparently they like to swim,
Speaker 2: which is very unique for cats.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, they're into water related activities like swimming, showering
Speaker 1: with their owners. Yeah I had wakeboarding.
Speaker 2: But yes I stepped on it. That was even better.
Speaker 1: I stepped on yours too, So there.
Speaker 2: Although kneboard a knee boarding cat. Maybe that's the best joke.
Speaker 1: I thought in kneeboarding too. I workshopped it very briefly
Speaker 1: with myself and said wakeboarding, So the way do you go?
Speaker 1: The thing is is a lot of people buy these
Speaker 1: things and they're like, uh, it's gonna go with my purse.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna carry this cat around whenever I have my
Speaker 1: purse and then probably ignore it the rest of the time.
Speaker 1: I have it they're buying these cats for their looks essentially,
Speaker 1: which is I mean the kind of one of the
Speaker 1: things that that they're bred for is their looks. The
Speaker 1: problem is, even if they're expecting, like this is a
Speaker 1: cat I'm going to take care of, most people are
Speaker 1: totally unprepared for just how different Bengal cats are from
Speaker 1: your average cat. Like you said, all the stamina, all
Speaker 1: the If they get bored, they're very aggressive. So you
Speaker 1: don't want them to get bored because just say bye
Speaker 1: bye to your Aaron's rent furniture, right, yeah, Like you're
Speaker 1: like you are, You're you're in for it. If you
Speaker 1: buy a Bengal cat and take it as your own,
Speaker 1: you it's just going to be way more work than
Speaker 1: the average cat, which can usually amuse itself. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people buy two to keep them busy with
Speaker 1: one another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh yeah, And I guess they have a lot
Speaker 2: of money because I saw that snow leopard version can
Speaker 2: go for like two grand.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised, that's all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I could.
Speaker 1: See breeders charging way more than that. I'm really surprised. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a value.
Speaker 2: Apparently if they have wild parents or grandparents, it's even
Speaker 2: worse and they require even more socialization than you know,
Speaker 2: which makes sense than the ones who are further removed
Speaker 2: from that wild lineage. And I looked up online because
Speaker 2: this article from how Stuff Works. I'm not sure when
Speaker 2: it was, but it said like Hawaii as a state
Speaker 2: has put a band on breeding and ownership, and then
Speaker 2: so I looked up and there there are quite a
Speaker 2: few states that either have outright bands on ownerships or
Speaker 2: bands on breeding or both, or if they don't have bands,
Speaker 2: they have a lot of like you have to have
Speaker 2: a permit and like hoops you have to jump through
Speaker 2: to get one of these things right. So, yeah, people
Speaker 2: are kind of standing up and or you know, cat
Speaker 2: rescue organizations are obviously standing on their podium and screaming like,
Speaker 2: please don't support this kind of thing. Do not buy
Speaker 2: hybrid cats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you ever drift drive past a strip mall
Speaker 1: and it says cats or puppies or something kittens on
Speaker 1: a sign, you want to keep driving.
Speaker 2: Oh well, unless it's uh they're doing like an adoption
Speaker 2: event on the sidewalk, it's.
Speaker 1: A little different. I'm talking more like a permanent sign. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sign I try to put up like on the shopping
Speaker 1: centers directory.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. I just wanted to draw that distinction because
Speaker 2: that's what they will often do, is set up in
Speaker 2: front of like pet COO or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah you mean. And I were looking once at a
Speaker 1: pet co before we got MO, and there was there
Speaker 1: were dogs they had. It was so sad. They had
Speaker 1: dogs that had all different kinds of special needs or handicaps,
Speaker 1: kind of sequestered off from the other dogs. And among
Speaker 1: these dogs there was a little Chihuahua and apparently the
Speaker 1: only thing unusual about him was that he couldn't retract
Speaker 1: his tongue, so his tongue was always sticking out and
Speaker 1: you had to keep a tongue moist. Yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: super cute like it was. That's just always stuck with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's there's a breed of dog that
Speaker 2: has that tongue out full time, right. I don't know that.
Speaker 2: I think that like the supposedly ugliest dog on earth,
Speaker 2: that breed whatever it is that is like patchy hair
Speaker 2: and looks kind of crazy and has it. I think
Speaker 2: they have their tongue permanently out.
Speaker 1: They have a non retractable tongue.
Speaker 2: I guess, so I'll look at should do a short
Speaker 2: stuff on that dog because I don't like some calling
Speaker 2: an animal the ugliest whatever.
Speaker 1: No, that sounds kind of Internet clickbaity, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agreed. All right, Well I think we're at the
Speaker 1: end of Bengal cats. Eh. Yes, okay, see you guys,
Speaker 1: Short Stuff's out.
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