About Us

One day, at the age of nine, my resourceful little girl walked up to me and said “Mom, I found a cat breed that is hypoallergenic”. How could I say no? Especially since I then read that they like to go on walks on leads – I thought “Hey, this is a breed that will fit right in with our busy household”.

Our first cat arrived, and we realised quickly she was hilarious. Loved car rides, walked on a lead (and then off lead on our property), swam with glee, was a goofball, loving and cuddly yet kicked the dog’s proverbial – I realised this breed’s got some game!

Then my hubby said something that changed everything. One night he said, “We should get a breeding Bengal girl, it would be great for the kids”. I didn’t reply then, just told him a week later that he needed to go to the airport to pick up our new kitten. I’m sure you can imagine his surprise, a throw away comment started a whole new interest for our family.

We were planning on only one breeding girl, but then…the colours! How could we have only one breeding girl when there are so many beautiful colours? So, next up three more queens and a compatible stud. But wait, we thought, if we got another stud with recessive genes for different colours, we could end up with even more diversity in our Bengal colours in our programme, and then could more selectively breed for particular traits!

And so we now have a full house for our programme, seven queens, two kings and we regularly work with another breeder to maximise our gene pool.

We are a registered breeder with Cat Owners Association of Western Australia, breeder number 985.

We named our cattery Kamanda Bengals, Swahili for Commander, as a nod to our decade in East Africa coupled with our commitment to providing leadership in contributing to and developing this wonderful breed. We do so through having carefully selected our foundation breeding cats coupled with ongoing mentorship from a leader in the Bengal fieldto benefit from third party expert oversight.

We are fortunate to benefit from the mentorship of the legendary Melinda Radus of Adelhills Bengals (www..bengalcatbreeder.com.au), based in South Australia. Melinda is one of theforemost experts inthe development of the Bengal breeds. Awell-known leader in the Bengal world, Melinda has over a decade crafted acarefully targeted breeding programme which elicits key Bengal traitsresulting in win after win in theshow ring. Melinda is a Bengal breed “great” who provides us with invaluable advice and support on our breeding programme. She started us off with our stunning foundation stud Adelhills Special Forces (who sparked our interest in promoting the breed)and later sent herGrand Champion queenAdelhills Bee Bada Boom to join our programme. We are extremely grateful to benefit from Melinda’songoing extensive experience and guidance.

In terms of our acquiring phenomenal breeding cats, we look for champion producing bloodlines bred both in Australia and abroad, delivering on the physical characteristics and temperaments we aim for. We have top of the line breeder genes in our Bengals. Each of our Kings and Queens are special and has a particular trait or characteristic that we love and wish to bring forward in our lines.

In one of our girls, Sheba, she is the “complete package”, a culmination of the life work of Carla Woolfaart of Afrikatte Bengals (www.afrikattebengals.com).Carla is another extremely highly regarded expert on Bengals and her kittens are highly sought after by both breeders looking to improve their lines and pet owners who want the combined temperament and beauty that the best of the breed enshrines. Carla is oneof the greatest, longest and most committed contributors to the development of the breed in Australia – in her words, with Sheba she achieved her goals and was then ready to retire from breeding.