Head Defect - a short background and description:

With its shining jet black coat and amber eyes the traditional Bombay looks like a miniature black panther. Nikki Horner had the black panther in mind when she created the Bombay breed. To develope this miniature black panther she mixed brown Burmese with American Shorthair.

In the 1970s a line of Burmeses was bred in the east of the US. These cats had big success at shows in the whole US. They were called Contemporary (modern) and had extremly 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 carrier of this gene that causes Head Defect, because the breeders longed for success at shows where judges preferred the extreme. This gene that causes Head Defect is nowadays (since 2012) easily discovered by a simple DNA test. Our intention is to keep the Bombay and Burmese breed healthy and therefore only use tested cats in our breeding program.