breed??

Question
Hi! I have a 9 month old female kitten, Tink. I have been researching her breed for the longest time and the veterinarian said she is a Bengal, yet on her records they put Brown Tabby. I am confused, she has all of the characteristics and behaviors of a Bengal.The facial features, length, actions match to a tee!!! The only thing is she is striped, but not defined stripes, but not really marbled(at least not the ones pictured online). She looks like some pictures I have seen of other Begnals. Can bengals look more striped than seperatly spotted? I also read that sometimes Bengals show up on farms because of the mix breeding.(I got her from a farm) Can you help? Any advice at all would be helpful!!! Thanks....willing to send pictures if needed! Katie

Answer
Katie,

You can go to www.bengalcat.com to see what Bengals look like.  Bengals can have all kinds of markings and, by now, there is probably some Bengals in the feral population.

You can certainly email me a picture, but, in my experience, without seeing the cats in person, it is often very difficult to tell.  

In the feral population there are many variations on the 5 major tabby patterns many of which are similar to some of the patterns seen in Bengals. The 5 patterns are:  Mackeral Tabby (tiger stripe), Classic Tabby (blotched tabby), Ticked tabby (no stripes, but each hair has 4-6 bands of color), spotted tabby following a mackeral tabby pattern (the spots line up like broken stripes) and spotted tabby following the classic pattern (spoy=ts are more randomly distributed).

However, the odds are that your kitty is a mixed breed and, although there may be Bengal in the background, there is no easy way, short of an expensive DNA test, to find out.

But, anyway, if you look at the web site and are convinced there is Bengal back there, no one could really dispute it (without a DNA test).

Best regards... Norm.