Some people like cats and some people adore them even enough to lease them.

When a friend bought a pure-bred Bengal house cat as a pet about five years ago, Pamela Rohan of Eagle Mountain became entranced with the animal, quickly buying one of the specialty leopard look-alike cats for herself.

Soon ownership was not enough and Rohan became a breeder. When she heard about a new line of cats, called Toygers, bred to look like toy tigers, Rohan spent months convincing the breed founder, Judy Sugden of California, to let her breed them, too.

The only Toyger breeder in Utah, Rohan has now become the first breeder in the United States to attempt the creation of silver Toygers. Featured in the Feb. 23 issue of Life magazine, an insert of the Daily Herald, Rohan found sudden fame, with cat breeders and fanciers from across the nation seeker her out.

The Toygers have a down-soft short-hair fur that glows golden with black tiger stripes. Squat ears, a wide chin, smaller eyes, white belly, well-defined muscles and a cheek ruff give the cats a tiger-like appearance. Rohan and a handful of other authorized breeders nationwide are working with Sugden to perfect the look, which they hope will happen around 2010.

Toygers with exquisite markings, the holy grail of breeding, are so rare that Rohan leases one from Sugden. Leasing allows Rohan and other owners to intermingle the genes of the best cats to stave off inbreeding while moving each generation closer to the ideal Toyger physique.

The day the magazine came out, Rohan said her phone began ringing at 7:30 a.m. with a call from the East Coast. It was the last quiet moment of the day, and she was often on two phones lines at once.

Rohan has a dozen Bengal and Toyger cats at her Lake Mountain Cattery near her home. Rohan calls the cattery her "barn," but it is more like a sparkling white mansion for felines, with huge cages, climbing trees, and carpeted exercise wheels, each the size of a small airplane propeller.

Even this is not good enough for pregnant cats, though. The maternity ward is a carpeted bedroom inside Rohan's large home, which she shares with her husband and their blended family of nine children, three of whom still live at home.

Rohan said her cats are allowed to produce about 10 litters a year. Two cats, each about a week away from their due date, were in the maternity ward on a recent day, one pregnant with the nation's first generation of silver Toygers.

After about nine weeks, Rohan will choose the best Bengals and Toygers for her breeding program. A few others are sold to breeders each year who pay $2,500 for a Toyger with breeding rights and up to $2,000 for a Bengal.

After being spayed and neutered at the appropriate age, Rohan sells the remaining kittens to a roster of carefully screened owners from across the nation. Toygers go for $1,200; Bengals $800.

Though the prices may seem large, Rohan says she will never make a profit off the enterprise. She has recently completed the $30,000 barn for the cats, which had been housed in her three-car garage. She and her cats travel to cat shows around the country six to eight times a year. On the wall of the barn are dozens of prize ribbons.

As a child, Rohan said she was smitten with tigers and leopards, keeping posters of them in her bedroom. Owning and breeding Toyger and Bengal cats is the next best thing to having a tiger or leopard in the house.

Sugden said she allowed Rohan to become the first silver Toyger breeder in the nation because Rohan is persistent and professional in her breeding -- and willing to lose money.

"We all knew that eventually we would want to do a white Toyger," she said, noting that because white is a difficult recessive gene, breeders are working on silver first. "She (Rohan) is an imaginative breeder and she works to improve the breed, rather than just breeding for the cat shows. She is willing to do something that is hard and there is no money in it."

Rachel Lake of Springville, owner of the Bengal Garden Cattery, became a Bengal breeder three years ago after her brother bought a Bengal from Rohan. Today she and Rohan are part of the Salt City Cat Club, which will host its first large-scale cat show in Las Vegas on April 7-8.

"Bengals are really fun cats," Lake said. "What entranced me the most was their personality. They love to follow you around and see what you are doing. And they are so beautiful."

For more information on Bengal and Toyger cats, visit www.lakemountainBengals.com.

Caleb Warnock can be reached at 443-3263 or cwarnock@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B1.