Felis chaus – the jungle cat, described as a ‘flexible all-purpose cat’

Felis chaus – photos by (top left and clockwise) – INeedCoffee/CoffeeHero,  melanistic jungle cat by Joachim S Muller, Dr. Tarak N Khan, bv_madhukar, by Kuna Naik, bv_madhukar

The coat of felis chaus is plain. It is basically an unmarked tabby coat. Kittens have markings, either spots or stripes that fade at sexual maturity. If an adult retains markings, it is on the tail, hindlimbs and forehead. The muzzle is white. The colour of the coat is from tawny grey to a reddish, sandy colour as shown in the lower right photograph in the collage above but the undersides are lighter or white. They have dark hair tuffs at the end of their ears. The tail looks relatively insubstantial compared to many other wildcats such as the Andean cat or the clouded leopard and is more like that of the bobcat.

The face is relatively slim compared to the squarer faces of other wild cats. The ears are quite large (particularly the ears of the cat top left in the collage).

The black jungle cat in the collage is not that rare. Apparently, they occur frequently in south east Pakistan and they are also found in India. They are called “melanistic”. This is in reference to the pigment “melanin” that is in each individual hair.

The similarity to the domestic cat is not just skin deep — it has been established scientifically. There might be subspecies of the jungle cat as the distribution (range) of this cat is very wide but no research has been carried out to establish this.