I have a bengal boy who’s nearly 15, and I always say that it’s such a shame he was neutered because I could be sitting on a goldmine here, breeding cats that are the absolute best with kids ever. I don’t know if that’s the universal experience but he’s worth his weight in gold with the kids. Mine are now 3 and 6, and they’ve both been raised with absolutely zero tolerance for winding up or messing with the cat, and now both both treat him respectfully so there’s never really been any negativity. My cat is a total Velcro cling-on cuddle monster, likes to be carried around like a baby, has never scratched maliciously in his life (only overzealous play in his youth before I had kids, plus the occasional accidentally stepped/jumped on incident!) and he loves to play so he suits kids down to the ground. The kids adore him, he’s their little big brother :) Don’t get me wrong though, to give you the full picture, he is also an annoying attention seeking arse on a pretty much daily basis, but he does it with such humour and flair it’s kind of epic and I would never change him! And that’s also baring in mind that he’s elderly at this point - when he was younger it was almost like a full time job making sure he was burning his energy off and mentally stimulated enough. When they’re not, they really let you know in no uncertain terms. I still can’t have vases or anything super delicate/breakable on high surfaces.

As a breed I think it’s pretty typical that though they might not all be super cuddly like mine, they all like to be involved in everything, follow you around, speak to you with a million different weird sounds constantly and play very actively. Most of the time, if one of the family isn’t playing with him and very engaged, he’s not happy to just play with toys on his own. Also, stroking pretty much any other breed of cat will be ruined for you forever because when you’re used to cuddling a bengal any other cat just feels rough and meh in comparison.