Nikki Horner created the Bombay breed in the US; she had a vision to breed a miniature black panther. To develop this breed she mixed brown Burmese and Black American Shorthair.

In the 1970s a line of Burmese was bred in the east of the US, the cats had big successes at shows in the whole US. They were called Contemporary (modern) and they had extremely short noses and round heads.

This hunt for short noses led to the catastrophe in the Burmese breed during the seventies and has continued to do so. This new look caused a mutation in these Burmese lines, which was called head defect. It lead to a lot of kittens being born with deformed heads, still alive (double whiskers, no eyes, no nose). The only way to ease the pain is to put the kitten to sleep.

The result is that most Bombay/Burmese with Contemporary lines is bearer of this gene that causes Head Defect, because the breeders longed for success at shows (where the judges preferred the extreme, modern type).

The Contemporary Bombay – the modern type –does not, according to us, look like a black panther.