Breed Profiles

Let us clear this up first, because it comes up in every conversation about the breed. The Bombay has no wild ancestry whatsoever. No panther, no leopard, no jungle cat, nothing exotic in the pedigree and nothing from India despite the name. It is a deliberate cross between two entirely domestic breeds, designed by one woman who wanted a cat that looked like a small black panther and had the sense to breed for temperament at the same time.

That woman was Nikki Horner, working in Louisville, Kentucky, from the 1950s. Her method was straightforward on paper and slow in practice: put a sable Burmese to a black American Shorthair, then select relentlessly over generations for a jet coat, copper eyes and the Burmese build. Early attempts failed. She kept at it, and championship recognition in the United States finally came in 1976. In Britain the story went differently, with black cats developed out of Burmese crosses within what is now the Asian group, so a British Bombay and an American Bombay are not quite the same animal on paper.

What the black is supposed to look like

A proper Bombay coat is not simply dark. It is black to the roots, with no rusty undercoat and no ghost markings once the cat is mature, and it lies so close and so short that it reads as polished leather in sunlight. The nose leather is black, the paw pads are black, and the eyes should be copper or deep gold, which is the detail that stops the whole thing looking like an ordinary moggie. Against a black coat, gold eyes are startling.

Kittens are a different matter and new owners sometimes panic. Bombay kittens frequently show faint tabby ghost stripes, particularly across the flanks, and their eye colour comes in slowly, often greyish before it warms up. Both usually resolve by around a year. There is one more genetic quirk worth knowing: because the Burmese sits behind the breed, some Bombays carry the Burmese colour restriction gene, and two carriers bred together can produce sable-coloured kittens. They are perfectly healthy pet cats, they simply are not Bombays.

Physically, they inherit the Burmese trick of being much heavier than they look. Expect roughly six to eleven pounds of solid, muscular cat with a rounded head, a short muzzle and a rolling, deliberate walk that owners always describe as a swagger. Grooming amounts to running a rubber brush or a chamois over the coat once a week to lift dead hair and put a shine on it. They shed less noticeably than most shorthairs, though black hair on a pale sofa is its own kind of visible.

Living with one, which is not a passive activity

Horner selected for personality as hard as she selected for colour, and it shows. Bombays are extroverted, confident, nosy and entirely uninterested in your boundaries. They greet strangers at the door instead of hiding under the bed. They sit on laptops, supervise cooking, and follow their person from room to room with an air of quality control. Many take to a harness and lead with less fuss than average, and a fair number will retrieve a thrown toy repeatedly, which surprises people who think that is a dog behaviour.

They are also serious heat seekers. A Bombay finds the radiator, the sunny patch, the laptop vent, the airing cupboard, the space directly under the duvet against your ribs. In winter you will not be sleeping alone. This is charming right up until you want to get out of bed.

The voice is present but moderate. Bombays talk, and they can be insistent about meals, but the tone is softer and less penetrating than a Siamese, and most households find it easy to live with. Where they need real thought is company. This is a breed that hates being ignored and does badly with long solitary days. They generally get on well with children, with other cats and with reasonable dogs, and in a busy household they thrive. In a silent flat occupied twelve hours a day by nobody, they become bored, vocal and occasionally destructive.

Because the Burmese is a foundation breed, the Bombay inherits some of the same health considerations, and it is worth asking a breeder about them directly. Excessive tearing from the eyes is fairly common and usually cosmetic. Gingivitis and dental disease turn up more than average, so start toothbrushing while the cat is young rather than after the first extraction. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the commonest feline heart disease, appears across many pedigree breeds and Bombays are not exempt, which is an argument for a vet who actually listens to the chest at every visit.

Two inherited problems trace back specifically to the Burmese side. Hypokalaemic polymyopathy, causing episodes of muscle weakness in young cats, has a DNA test available. And the craniofacial defect associated with extreme contemporary Burmese head type has been reported in lines carrying that ancestry, which is one reason to ask a breeder what they breed away from rather than only what they breed towards. A healthy Bombay commonly lives twelve to sixteen years, sometimes longer.

Here is the awkward part, and any honest write-up should include it. Black shelter cats are the hardest cats in the world to rehome. They sit in rescue longer than any other colour, they photograph badly, and superstition still costs them homes. A Bombay is a specific breed with a specific build and temperament and there is nothing wrong with wanting one, but if what you actually want is a friendly black cat with a shiny coat, there are hundreds of them waiting right now and they cost a great deal less.

Go for the real thing and you get something quite particular: a compact, glossy, self-possessed cat that treats your house as its command post and your lap as a permanent posting. It is not a wild animal in miniature. It is a domestic cat, bred with unusual clarity of purpose, that happens to look like it strolled out of somewhere much more dangerous.