If you are photographing a Scottish wildcat (and it will be in captivity almost certainly) you are going to get a fierce look as you can see in this photograph because they are renowned for their aggressivity in the nicest possible way because they are called a “wildcat”. They’re meant to be aggressive towards people because they don’t know people. They should and do treat people with great caution and in a defensive way.
The fierce expression, the flattened ears and the thick, tabby, banded tail at the end of a stocky body covered with thick fur is the way I visualise the Scottish wildcat. And remember that somebody pointed a camera at this cat’s face which is exactly why he or she has become defensively aggressive. The sadness about this wildcat, which I would also describe by the way as the European wildcat because I don’t consider the Scottish wildcat to be a separate species, is that it is quite possibly extinct in the wild or totally.
This photograph looks like a genuine Scottish wildcat but I would bet that it was taken some time ago when it was believed that there were about 400 in the wild – all in Scotland. Now the experts believe that there are none quite possibly. They aren’t sure but if you think you have sighted a Scottish wildcat it is quite likely that you are looking at a hybrid version because they meet extensively with stray domestic cats and feral cats and mate. For the conservationists there’s pretty much nothing they can do about this unless they get the Scottish government to enact law to keep all domestic cats indoors all the time and eradicate the feral cats. Nobody has proposed that and I guess nobody will as it is impossible to achieve.
