Bombay
The Louisville Hugger
By Phil Maggitti

Despite the exotic association evoked by its name, the Bombay is an American cat, as

American as the Kentucky Derby or the Louisville Slugger. Indeed, the Bombay shares a hometown - Louisville, Kentucky - with these American icons.

The Bombay was the inspiration of the late Nikki Horner, who was something of an inspiration herself. Horner began breeding cats in 1943 at the age of 16, a time when most young people are satisfied with simply owning a cat.
"I'd get these magazines that had pictures of all the good cats in them," said Horner, "and I'd tell my mom and dad, 'I want this one. I want that one.' They bought me some really nice cats. I had fine parents who helped me along."

Horner was also helped along by a jeweler's eye for quality and a drill sergeant's devotion to order. Siamese were her breed of choice at first, but before she was through imposing her will on the genetic process, her Shawnee cattery also produced Persians, Burmese, Himalayans, American shorthairs, Bombays, Manx and rex.

Like many cat fanciers, Horner kept track of the number of cats she bred that earned the cat fancy's highest title: grand champion. Trouble was, she bred so many grand champions she had to stop counting at 100. She also recorded the name of each of her cats that won best-in-show honors, but she had to call off that reckoning at 500 - or else hire an accounting firm to keep track of her cats' achievements. (While Horner's cats were doing all this winning, she laid claim to a title of her own by capturing the Miss

Kentucky pageant in 1954.)

Over the Moon

As John Fitzgerald Kennedy was rewriting the rules of engagement in American politics, Nikki Horner was redefining the measure of success in the cat world. In 1960 she won the cat-of-the-year award with a magnificent white Persian male named Shawnee Moonflight. Thus cloud of impeccably groomed fur became the cat fancy's one and only back-to-back cat-of-the-year winner by repeating that feat in 1961. Then, in 1963, Moonflight took the title an unprecedented -- and as yet unmatched third time.

An interesting subtext to Moonflight's dominance was provided by two other Shawnee cats: Shawnee Soapsuds, who was Moonflight's litter sister, was best-opposite-sex cat in 1960. Shawnee Whitewash, a Soapsuds' daughter, was best-opposite-sex cat in 1961, '63, and '65.

Horner's other top gun at that time was Grand Champion Shawnee Trademark, a silver classic tabby domestic shorthair male, who was cat of the year in 1965 -- the first cat of his breed (which is now called the American shorthair) to achieve this honor.

In Search of Black Gold

While Horner was claiming one cat-of-the-year title after another, she was also producing some of the finest Burmese in the country; but as fine as they were, they weren't fine enough to suit her.

"There seemed to be something missing," she recalled. "I thought, 'Wouldn't they be absolutely gorgeous if they were black with copper eyes [instead of sable with yellow eyes]?' Then I said to myself, 'Well, that's one thing I haven't done yet -- create a new breed.'"

Horner decided to call her creation the Bombay, "after the black leopard and the city in India. I think the name has a ring to it. It's very exotic sounding. Of course if I had known in advance the expense and all the work it would take to establish a breed, I'm not sure I would have done it." (The paperwork, politicking and litter-pan cleaning involved in getting a new breed of cat recognized makes starting a corporation look like opening a lemonade stand on the front lawn.)

Horner's first attempt to produce a copper-eyed black cat with Burmese conformation was a thumping failure. One of the few things she didn't get right in her career.

"I crossed black domestic shorthairs and Burmese, but the cats I produced were big and horsy. They looked like poor American shorthairs. Besides, their coats were too long, and their eye color wasn't any good. So I had to start all over again."

The second time around Horner found a black domestic shorthair male in Minneapolis. He had the burnished-copper eye color that she had been seeking, so she bred him to one of her best Burmese females. Then she bred one of her best Burmese males to a black domestic shorthair female, a half-sister to cat-of-the-year Trademark. Horner kept all the kittens from these litters, crossed them with one another, and she was on her way; but a long and winding road it was.

"When I tried to get people interested in the breed," said Horner, "they would say, 'I'll wait until you get them recognized, then I'll buy one.' That attitude really delayed acceptance. I had to show my new cats in provisional (nonchampionship) classes forever."

She also had to find homes for a lot of unshowable kittens. When Horner crossed a black American shorthair with a Burmese, she got black kittens, black being dominant to sable; but each of those kittens carried a recessive gene for sable, and when she bred two of those cats together, half the kittens were sable and were, therefore, unshowable.

Because Bombay are supposed to resemble Burmese in general conformation, Horner continued to use Burms in her effort to develop the Bombay. This strategy also resulted in a number of sable kittens that might have resembled Burmese but could not be shown as such because they weren't "purebred." Present-day Bombay breeders, who continue to use Burmese to refine their Bombays, have the same problem. Most associations, with the exception of The International Cat Association, will not permit breeders to show sable- colored Bombays as Burmese.

Lifetime Achievement Award

In 1976 the Cat Fanciers' Association became the first registry to recognize the breed that Nikki Horner liked to refer to as "the patent leather kids with the new-penny eyes." By that time, after thousands of miles and hundreds of kittens, Horner was feeling a little crispy around the edges.

"Getting the Bombay recognized just about did me in," she said. "It was so tiring, I'd lost interest in cats altogether. I promised myself that if I got this breed recognized, I was going to take a break. So I got out of cats the year Bombays were accepted."

You can get out of cats, to be sure, but you can't always get cats out of

your system. By 1986 Horner was back in the hunt, showing a Burmese and a Bombayand doing quite nicely once again. She had the highest-scoring Bombay in the country in 1987.

Horner hadn't lost any of her style or verve during her sabbatical, either. At one show when a judge was presenting one of her Bombays with an award, he mentioned that this cat was "a lovely man-made breed."

"Excuse me," said a voice in Southern drawl from the gallery. "That's woman- made."

The judge, said Horner, wasn't particularly amused by her observation. "I said it jokingly, and this particular judge was one to do a lot of joking around in the ting; but for some reason the judge got really angry and told me afterward, 'You got me good, but I won't forget it.' And that judge never, ever gave me another win with that cat."

Nikki Horner died of cancer on April 11, 1995. During nearly half a century's worth of participation in the cat fancy, she had written her name in large, florid letters across its record books. We will probably never see the likes of her 1960-through-'65 performances again. Yet when she was asked to name the most satisfying thing she's done in cats, she talked about the Cat Fanciers' Association's 1988 Invitational Show.

"When I walked into the show hall with those sky-high ceilings that had big white banners hanging down over each breed section, and I saw the one that said Bombay, I thought, 'By golly, people won't remember all the cats and all the wins I've had over the years; but when I'm gone, the Bombay breed will still be here."