A little history:
After a casual mention that I was interested in one of my friends' kittens, I come home from a trip to find my wife has purchased the same beautiful baby boy I had first taken notice of. He has three long stripes down his back, a beautiful butterfly on his shoulders with a warm orange color overall. By normal bengal standards he is nothing exceptional, but he stood out to me and I was mesmerized by him. He must have realized how I felt because I've never seen a cat so similarly captivated by his owner. I started teaching him basic commands and tricks, and he loved learning... as long as he got a treat
About 3 months later I got a call from my friend asking if I had fixed Orion yet. I told her no, that he hadn't started spraying yet so I wasn't in any rush and usually wait till my animals fill out a little bit (I've heard organ development can be stunted by early neutering and I didn't want to risk anything regardless of the validity). She suggested that I keep him unaltered and work out a breeding arrangement with her, apparently she wanted an unrelated/local male bengal for one of her queens but didn't want to add any additional males at her house (totally understandable). I agreed to try it out, though I didn't think Orion would be big enough when her female went into heat. We tried it the following month anyway, when Orion was just over 6 months old. To our surprise the pairing took! We didn't know this at the time, but we soon discovered he carried APb, blue and snow. I was blown away to say the least. Out of the five girls born, two were snows, one was charcoal, and two were browns. I was drawn to the charcoal, and we started calling her Nugget, I can't honestly say why. She now lives with my father-in-law and is as spoiled as can be. Terrorizing their three small dogs and just generally being a curious kitten. Orion is still here and is now the proud owner of a catio, after almost 6 months of struggling to get it built right... I'm no builder myself and definitely didn't have the tools needed, thankfully Nugget's new owners were extremely proficient in building small structures and helped us out a lot. He shows his appreciation with 6am kisses and 1am excited jolts around the house and into the catio. I wouldn't ask for it any other way!!
-Alex