Hi all, newby here! First, thanks for the wonderful forum - been reading for a few months, just now finally posting.

We just got our first Bengal, who we named Gambit. He's just the sweetest thing. Very mischievious, loves to play with our kids (who he is being very patient with ). I'll include a picture below, him with his 20 week old kitty playmate, Jasper (a Tonkinese). He has a lovely golden coat, with a ton of glitter.

I did a search for 'rosetta' and it came up blank. I suppose it's a glitch with the new software.

So being new to the world of Bengals, I'm curious about rossettas.

Currently our 12 week old little kitten mostly has black spots, a few which have subtle rosetting (sp?). I'm curious if rossettas grow larger or more dramatic as Bengals age? Or does the kitten's coat tend to look the same as they get older?

Her's the pic!



Thanks in advance,

jeff

Hi Jeff.....Thats one sweet picture!

When you say rosetta, I think you mean rosettes.....Am I right in thinking that?

As your bengal grows the spots will stretch a little with the body making the rosettes a bit more noticable.....But more importantly the background colour will clear up giving great contrast to the spots/rosettes.

By the time he is 6 months old his profile and general appearance will have fully developed.....And then depending on when you get him neutered full maturity will be reached by about 12 months old at which point his coat should be how it will stay forever.

If you can see rosettes now then they will only get more defined with age.....And quite often some of the ones that look like spots at the moment will rosette-up too!

Try taking a nice side-on photo in good natural sunlight and you'll see everything much more clearly than with the naked eye.....you'll be suprised at the detail a camera can pick out!

Thanks for sharing and we'd all love to see more pics of these two little monkeys.

Hi Jeff,

Welcome to the forums - love that pic, can't wait to see more of them

Gavin.

Meem & Gavin, thanks for the warm welcome!

Meem, yes - I did mean "rosettes" - I guess misspelling it didn't help when searching .

I'll be sure to post some more photos as Gambit gets bigger.

Interesting that you bring up neutering - since Jasper is 5 months old, we're getting him neutered in a week or two. We were wondering if we should do Gambit (who would be 14 weeks old then) at the same time, primarily so that Gambit isn't wanting to jump all over Jasper when he's trying to heal. (I hope that made sense)

thanks again for your words of wisdom!

5-6 months is perfect....It gives them time to mature and gain more of a character before they lose the jewels!

I've heard of people doing it as early as 16 weeks here in the u.k, But I'm not convinced.....They need time to change and develop into a man-cat in my opinion.

Don't worry too much about after the op.....Jasper will feel a little groggy for a few hours or so and maybe he should be left alone for a while but he'll be back to light-speed by the following morning.....He'll only have a couple of small stitches normally just at the top of his testes-sac and he really won't do any harm to himself whilst playing with Gambit.

They are hardly ever as affected as you would think they would be.....If it was us who had that particular operation we'd be off work for an eternity for sure!

We had our 2 done at 6 months - it's a lot less intrusive on a male, Zeus was right as rain within a day or so (other than a change in character, he's not a soppy as he was), Hestia was groggy for a bit longer, biggest problem was stopping her licking the wound.