Today in February 2019, online news media is chattering excitedly about a video from a camera trap of a wild ocelot meandering through the Arizona wilds. He looks very lonely; he should be because they are extremely rare. In fact … please continue reading
We don’t know when ocelots were discovered because it happened at a time before science and record keeping was developed and the classification of the species had taken place. You’d have to go back perhaps hundreds of thousands of years … please continue reading
African Golden Cat Photo: © Gary P. Aronsen Overview The African golden cat is a small/medium sized wild cat of a variety of colors that lives in the band of forests of equatorial Africa that extend from the west coast … please continue reading
What does felis catus mean? I’ll try and break this Latin phrase down to its components and provide translations on the way. An alternative to felis catus is felis silvestris catus (the trinomial name). They are both Latin versions of … please continue reading
The cat with the most pronounced ‘ticked coat’ is the jaguarundi, a small wild cat species. The picture of a jaguarundi on this page illustrates this extraordinarily ticked coat. The cat fancy (domestic cat breeders) use the term ‘ticked’ to … please continue reading
“African lynx” is an old-fashioned name for the caracal; this species of wild cat is the only lynx-like animal in Africa. However, the caracal range spreads into the Middle East and Western Asia and therefore to describe the cat as … please continue reading
The rusty-spotted cat is the world’s smallest cat and certainly the smallest wild cat. It is very cute looking but decidedly wild and particularly vicious. There is a nice story from 1874 of a scientist who had a pet rusty-spotted cat who leapt at a gazelle fawn and tried to kill it. please continue reading
The cat was first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent which is a large crescent shaped area encompassing modern day countries such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Kuwait. The earliest domestic cat is believed to date from around 7,500 BC, found in Cyprus which is an island adjacent to the eastern sector of the Fertile Crescent. please continue reading
The jungle cat is a small wild cat species (“somewhat larger and lankier than domestic cats”) living over a large distribution from the Middle East to the Far East. Over this large area it coexists with other carnivores of a … please continue reading
Overview The Chinese mountain cat is more commonly named the Chinese desert cat, although it is a little misleading as habitat is mountainous terrain. However, little is known about this rare wild cat which is one the wildcat species, a … please continue reading
