Hey,
I had my 1 and 1/2 year old bengal for 2 months now. She has been brought up indoors and I mentioned to the breeder that I wanted to introduce her to the garden. They were ok even though they had advertised her as an indoor pet and only really seemed concerned about busy roads.
I kept her in for about 3 weeks, had her chipped and tagged and gave her all the treatments for worms and fleas before I took her out. We are lucky as we have a long big back garden and a cat flap directly leading to it from the room she is in during the day, perfect. She also has not figured out yet that there is a path to the front of the house leading to the main road, fingers crossed she won't find out soon
.
Anyway, we made sure we went out with her for the first few times, 10 minutes or so at one time so she could get used toit slowly. She is great as she only goes as far as you do so we took a bit further every single time. Now she has free run during the day when we are not at home. However, I do lock her at night though as I am worried about foxes roaming in the area.
I feel a lot happier now because we have to keep her in one room during the day and can't let her run around the flat. However, knowing that she can choose to go out whenever she wants has made me feel at ease and she is not just kept in one room.
Anyway, we also noticed that she won't be out there for long as she wants to be with us wherever we go indoors and rarely leaves our side when we are at home. It's really funny sometimes as we know she loves being outdoors but isn't too keen on her own. She is very good in making sure we know that she wants us to take her outside.
Besides this, I'd wait at least 2 weeks before you let your cat outside. By then she/he will have identified her/his 'haven' and where it's safe, i.e. the territory.
Although I am happier for our cat to be outdoors, I am slightly concerned about her eating random things she finds. Bengals are known to have sensitive stomachs, so I'd watch that quite closely if you can.