The title deliberately rhymes. This is a pet caracal living in Russia and I’m going to criticise the owner who is Russian judging by the language on this cat’s Instagram webpage. I think it is completely wrong in the first place to treat a beautiful caracal, a highly athletic wild cat, as a pet. But to overfeed your caracal to the point where they are clearly obese and put a dunce’s hat on his head is insulting. It is disrespectful and it is stupid. This person should be ashamed of themselves. I hope they see this page and I would like them to comment but I doubt whether they will do either.
This is not the first caracal that has been overfed and ridiculed. There is another in Latvia. It seems that in this neck of the woods they have a penchant for possessing exotic creatures without having the ability to look after them properly. Perhaps they overfeed them to keep them happy because they’re so miserable being trapped in a home. In the wild they would have a home range of about 220 km² if they are males and 57 km² of females. You can get a sense of what it feels like to have in your DNA the need to be able to roam over 220 km² but be confined most of the time to a human home, probably a house.
It would not surprise me if they had declawed this cat. I am not saying they have but it’s possible. People who adopt exotic cats like this tend to be irresponsible in that regard. They want to possess a wild cat but they don’t want any downside and a potential downside is being scratched by large claws at the end of a powerful forearm. And declawing cats is a problematic operation at best.
Caracals make some pretty extraordinary sounds as well. They have the usual domestic cat sounds such as meowing, hissing, growling, spitting and purring but they can make a harsh hissing bark and other unfamiliar calls which are loud. Pretty intimidating I would have thought sometimes. But you don’t hear or see that sort of thing because people who post photographs on Instagram of pet caracals do their best to present to the world this idyllic existence.
No I am hating on the person who owns him.