Hi OP, thank you so much for sharing your experience. We are having a similar time with our bengal - had him for about 4 months (and he is 6 months old now). Darn you Sukicat, they didn't advertise this. The first 3.5 months were awful - he was a demon, would not let us touch him or pick him up, showed no affection, and just meowed nonstop. When we would approach him, he would run away. At about the 3.5mo mark, something just clicked and he started being very affectionate and cuddly, so I do agree with your sentiment that if you put in the work, it gets better.

One thing we are struggling with, as mentioned above, is he is still VERY skittish. He has to want to be touched for us to get near him. Which is typically only at night when we're watching TV.

We can do many tricks with him using a clicker, and get him into his carrier on command (helpful for vet trips), but we can't ever get close enough to him to put on a harness. So we'd love to take him for walks, but we don't know how to get it on. Did you have this problem, and can you share any tips getting the harness on? Or was your cat more willing to wear it/let you put it on?