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Psycho killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?

scottish wildcat

This, O my minions, is no pussycat. It’s a Scottish wildcat (Felis sylvestris grampia) — pound for pound, one of the evillest badass mofo’s on the whole mo-effing planet. Srsly.

About ten thousand years ago, two things happened in Catworld. Somewhere in the Near East, maybe out Iraq way, the ubiquitous wildcat, Felis sylvestris, up and self-domesticated its own self. Just rolled over, waved its legs in the air and showed mankind its collective fuzzy belly, becoming adorable Cheezburger-wantsing, succotash-suffering Felis sylvestris catus on the spot.

At the same time, two thousand miles to the North and West, the land bridge connecting Britain and France was drowned by global warming, isolating the local population of Felis sylvestris, which promptly morphed into Felis baddassicus mofocus. The bite of a radioactive spider may have been involved.

The Scottish wildcat is truly one of the wildest animals alive. It cannot be tamed. Hand rearing them from itty-bitty psycho-kittens makes not one bit of difference. Fancy Feast? Fuggidaboudid! A zookeeper who will happily go into a tiger’s cage will not go into the enclosure of a wildcat he raised from babyhood. A wildcat will attack anything and everything in its territory, including another wildcat. They were believed to be maneaters until the Fifties.

The Wildwood Trust, where Uncle B and I go to par-tay with the musty-lids, has a pair of Scottish wildcats. Never has a hating of my guts been communicated to me more eloquently through mere eyeballs. They made the wolf pack look like pussies.

The prehistoric version was up to four feet long, but modern wildcats are cat sized. They look like…adorable housecats. Like a squarer, chunkier Damien. Their tails are thick, and their ears kind of stick out sideways, but they’re totally catty in their catlikeness.

Felis sylvestris grampia

And that’s the problem: they’re interbreeding themselves out of existence. Like wolves and coyotes with dogs, wildcats freely interbreed with domestic cats. That’s the deal with keeping some in captivity, though captivity is clearly hateful to them: there may be as few as 400 purebred Scottish wildcats left. I’m not down with the hand-flapping over every newt and guppy and little brown bird that loses a bit of territory, but 400. That’s Siberian tiger kind of endangered.

Anyhow, dude has made a documentary about Scottish wildcats, due out on DVD this Summer. There’s a trailer at the link, but no ordering information yet. Part of the profits go to the Scottish Wildcat Association, a new charity that will be launched this Spring (let us hope by that time they’ve purged the dozens of “it’s” that should be “its” on their Web site).

I’m not necessarily advocating giving them money. Somehow, when you give to an animal charity these days, some human-hating commie seems to wind up with the money. But, you know, a DVD or a t-shirt might not hurt anything.

Protect our beloved endangered psycho killers.


SPECIAL BONUS QUIZ

Can you tell which one is Felis sylvestris catus and which one is Felis sylvestris grampia?

cat or wildcat

That’s right! They’re both crazed psycho killers!

February 4, 2008 — 1:13 pm
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