Breeding any F1 kittens entails many more difficulties and dangers than normal domestic cat breeding does, and any success is counterbalanced by equal amounts of heartache; one is dealing with very sensitive and highly strung wild animals, and with babies that nature simply hadn’t intended to be. But, at least with 50% wild blood F1 kittens, one of their parents is fully domesticated, in the form of their late generation mother.

However, creating Zeus was far more complex because it entailed breeding F1 babies from very early generation, high wild blood mothers. We started thinking about it a long time ago… Over the years, Sarah and I have bought and bred about 15 leopard cats – beautiful ones, with black spots and rosettes upon pale backgrounds, making them ideal for hybridising. And those that aren’t suitable such as our Amur leopard cats (whose coarse coats create poor quality Bengals) and our more endangered subspecies, join our African leopards, ocelots and servals in our Sarez Wild Cat Conservation Programme.

When our leopard cats breed, we hand-rear their cubs and keep them with our domestic cats, but even in this ideal environment, most never hybridise, with just 1 in 15 doing so. However, in 2000, one of our leopard cats, Sarez Little L., did mate some of his “harem” of Bengal females, becoming the first ever to do so in Britain! Grateful for this miracle, we were not expecting another, but then in 2004, a second leopard cat called Sarez Apollo, hybridised with some of his Bengal females!

Two leopard cats hybridising in one facility is an incredibly rare occurrence and has assured our cats a place in British Bengal history! Sarah and I are overjoyed… these events are our greatest achievements!