Wild Cats

I picked wild cats (Felidae) as the group of animals that I like my trips abroad to focus on. I plan to see every species of this family, although some are considered very difficult. I like having a goal to serve as a bit of a guideline for trip planning.

The nice thing about cats is that they always occur in interesting wildlife areas because a cat is often quite picky about the environment it lives in and the hunting opportunities it offers. Apart from that they are also very different, for example you have the big cats like tiger but also the very small cats like rusty-spotted cat. Also the family consists out of about 40 species (depending on which taxonomy you want to follow) so that makes it possible to give every species a lot of attention. This makes seeing a cat a lot more fun for me, than when I would see a new bird species because there are thousands of them.

Below I have posted photos of the cats I’ve seen until now. Documentation is the first priority and of course I always try to take the best pictures I can. My catlist consists now out of twenty two species, that are in the order that I’ve seen them: Iberian lynx, Lion, Cheetah, Leopard, African Wildcat, Sand Cat, Puma, Guiña, Sunda Leopard Cat, Marbled Cat, Sunda Clouded Leopard, Flat-headed Cat, Jaguarundi, Ocelot, Jaguar, European Wild Cat, Jungle Cat, Snow Leopard, Pallas’ Cat, Mainland Leopard Cat, Tiger, Rusty-spotted Cat and Eurasian Lynx. In the blog you can read the story behind the photos. So far I have seen only two cats without record shots which were Guiña and European WIld Cat. Flat-headed Cat is close though, a really bad photo, but the cat is recognizable!

The pictures are arranged chronologically from newest to oldest in the order that they were taken. This order doesn’t necessarily have to be the same order as then one I’ve seen the species in. Sometimes I get a better picture at a later time. The stories behind these pictures can be read in the blog.