Bombay Cat vs Black Cat: How to Actually Tell Them Apart

Most black cats are not Bombays, by definition: a Bombay is a pedigree with papers, not a look. But the LOOK is also specific. The two registries that wrote it down give you a four-point test better than any listicle.

The four-point test, from the standards

The coat: "patent leather" is the registries' own vocabulary, not marketing. A fine, satin-sheened, jet-black coat, black to the roots. An ordinary black cat's coat reads matte or rusty by comparison, and many carry hidden tabby ghosting in sunlight. The eyes: copper to gold, and this is the breed's signature.

BOTH TICA and CFA score eye color at 10 of 100 points, proportionally more weight than most solid breeds give it. The body: "deceptively heavy for its size" appears across the registry texts. A Bombay in the hands weighs more than the eye predicts. The gait: TICA's own words describe a sway when they walk, "similar to... an Indian black leopard," the whole reason the breed carries its name.

The myth to unlearn: nose and paw-pad color

Competitor pages claim black nose leather and black paw pads mark the Bombay out. The standards refute it. CFA's own AMERICAN SHORTHAIR standard requires the identical black nose and black paw pads on its solid black cats, with a gold eye that sits inside the Bombay's own accepted range. A solid black American Shorthair passes the nose test perfectly.

That is why TICA's own "Similar Breeds" field for the Bombay names exactly one breed: the American Shorthair. What actually separates that pair: coat texture and purpose (a hard, weatherproof working coat against a fine satin one), size class ("medium to large" against "medium, never large"), and eye depth (copper preferred against a flat gold floor).

Green eyes, orange eyes, and what they prove

Can an ordinary black cat have copper or orange eyes? Yes. Iris color comes from melanocyte activity independent of coat-color genes, so copper eyes on a shelter cat are not evidence of hidden Bombay ancestry (and no academic study exists on this specific question: we checked, and publish the absence). The reverse rule is harder. The American Bombay standard DISQUALIFIES green eyes, so a green-eyed "Bombay" without UK paperwork is telling you something. (Britain runs a different story: the British Bombay, a black Asian Shorthair under GCCF, normally wears green eyes, per two independent UK sources. The American standard this page describes is the TICA/CFA cat.)

So how rare is a real Bombay?

Rare enough to make the papers the point, and the registries' own dated counts say so plainly. TICA's own 2013 breed-section poll put Bombay at 1,080 of 427,593 cumulative registrations since 1979: one quarter of one percent. FIFe's own 2023 statistics recorded 10 Bombay registrations that year, ranking it 52nd of 59 breed codes. Both numbers carry their dates because both are snapshots, not today's census. The practical translation: if a listing offers a "Bombay" without registration papers, you are buying a lovely black cat, at a black cat's price (the price page carries what papers cost).

And the Burmese, in one paragraph

The Bombay's parent breed question earns exactly this much. The American Bombay was created from Burmese-by-American-Shorthair crosses, keeps the Burmese's compact heft, and is bred to one color the Burmese standard does not carry (jet black against the Burmese's sable-family coats). It is a sibling question with almost no search audience, so it lives here rather than on its own page.

The four-point test on one card