First it was the loose cobra, then the kidnapped alligator and anaconda…now, Stockport has a wild cat on the roam. Not a missing tabby or a feral kitten – ‘a large ‘mountain lion’ type animal’, seen in a local resident’s garden. Read it here.
Experts dismiss it as a ‘melanistic savannah’. No, I don’t know what that is, either, so I looked it up (hooray for free speech on the internet!). Wikipedia tells me it:
is a medium-sized African wild cat. DNA studies have shown that the serval is closely related to the African golden cat and the caracal.
I’m no wiser. I guess free speech is overrated.
Here’s a picture of a serval from junglecats.com (quoting the source – better practice than just linking the picture to the original website: dull reading, but I hope it will keep me out of a yankee jail):
Doesn’t look meaner than any other cat, does it?
I am reminded of my favourite cat quote. I’ve shared it before, but cats have nine lives, and so do their quotes:
Cats were once worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this.
Wild cats on the loose in Stockport…I guess I should have stayed in South Africa; it’s probably safer there. We emigrated from England to South Africa in 1982: first my Dad and younger brother; Mum and I followed six months later. Mum was on the phone to Younger Brother just after he arrived:
Mum: So what’s it like?
YB: [Joking] Great! I’m just watching the lions stroll down the street.
Mum: [Screams] [Incoherent babble about getting out of there now!] [Faints]
I could have that conversation with her today, from Widnes to Stockport, and it would be the same in its essentials.
Or maybe it would be me with the [Screams] [Incoherent babble] [Faints]: Mum’s been dead four years.
The Laughing Housewife 
Did it riouoar? You do live an exotic life in Stockport.
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Crazy, isn’t it? Apparently, they can purr and miaow, so why not roar as well?
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Looks like a pretty tame cuddly pussy to me
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I don’t know – maybe girl prison isn’t so bad? I often think – longingly – of the peace and quiet. Someone else has to buy the groceries, cook the food etc – and all that peace and quiet? Is there something wrong with my life, do you think, that the idea of prison is attractive to me?
Much more attractive than meeting a wild cat to be honest. Good luck with that.
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Prison as an escape…it’s an option, I suppose 🙂
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That wild cat is so pretty — all in purple.
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Maybe you have an international exotic animal smuggling ring right in your backyard but the smugglers are lousy animal handlers because their animals keep escaping. That picture of the wild cat is very misleading as to the “wildness” of the cat. Be careful walking the streets of Stockport! It’s never boring.
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More about Stockport please. As Viv says, I had no idea you lived in such exotic surroundings.
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Sounds like global warming is definitely affecting Stockport.
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OK, this is the weirdest serval I’ve ever seen? Where did you find that picture? Every serval I’ve ever encountered (in contained spaces) was tan with black spots, with these very lage ears. They’re beautiful and look quite friendly, unlike what’s roaming up and down your streets.
We have mountain lions here so we always want to be careful when hiking in the hills and mountains. They do hide but my sons’ school had a lockdown just before Christmas because a mountain lion was spotted just 5 minutes away from it. Spooky. And I thought I only had to worry about coyotes!
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Google Images.
That sounds scary. My nephew’s school in Durban often had shutdowns because of baboons.
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I think Google is playing tricks on you (maybe the WordPress people told them to!). Look how beautiful servals are, they’re the size of a bobcat:
http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/serval:leptailurus-serval-photo-12476.html
Now baboons sound a lot more scary than mountain lions, especially because they probably hang out in gangs.
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Maybe the wild cat heard about the loose reptiles and wanted to do something about it. Over the summer something ate two thirds of a cat and left the remainder on my front lawn – I assumed it was a coyote, but maybe we have an African cat roaming around our neighborhood as well.
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The whole world seems rather upside down these days…
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LOL… well I love any cats!! 🙂
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You are ridiculously funny! Just like what I say when people ask me about the African continent and my days living in West Africa… Yep, I can see a Rhino outside my window. Oops! There goes the leopard chasing the neighbor’s cat. Ugh! 😆
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Great fun, isn’t it?
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