And the backlash surfaces.

These guys paint Bengals and Savannah cats with the same brush as ligers and serval/caracal crosses (yeah, like owning a hybrid between two different wild predators in a domestic house is a good idea).

So are Bengals and Savannahs typically "ordinary cat coat and a wild personality." Or vice-versa? And is it true that "They all spray ... urine all over everything in their path" and "are wild and can "flip" on the owner in a second." and have "physical ailments", destroy the furniture, attack the vet, are a sign of the impending apocalypse, etc.

Or did the author just see the bad and poorly trained and badly handled ones? How much extra care do you have to take with a hybrid cat?


This article in the New York Times about Savannahs is milder, but still paints them as an expensive fad and venture into the unknown (and technically an illegal wild animal). I don't think I'd keep any kind of large, active cat in a city flat with no garden.

Odly, some people think that the whole hybrid cat thing is bad and wrong. Is it?

Is it legal to have Servals if you have a patch of land in SA? They were originally indigenous in the Western Cape, I read somewhere that they had died out (though IronicBuddha claims to have seen one) I wonder if we'll see any in the Kruger park? I seems likely but somehow sad that Savannahs will probaly go into SA not lovally bred, but imported from the US/UK. Are there even any Bengal cats in SA?

oh, and Kitty hamster wheel!!

I confess my latest vice and office-waste-of-time: eyeing of exotic kittys. Someday, I'd like to own swarms ... some .. ok, one or two of these:

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