OMG, you guys! No cap, you gotta totally check out this adorbz video of a sweet widdle kitty witty becoming best fwiends with this mountain lion!
Phoebe the cat sees this cute AF puma near the back door of her home, curiously looking inside. It’s love at first sight as kitty and kitty see each other! Per Parade Pets:
“[T]he kitty in this TikTok video is completely fascinated by the big kitty outside her window. There’s no getting her away from her new friend!
On Sunday, August 25, @cricketandstrawfl shared this footage of her Tuxedo Cat posted up at the back door in their house, where a cougar was hanging out. It goes without saying that the cougar in question was many times bigger than Phoebe, but that didn’t seem to scare her at all.
It seemed like the cougar was pretty curious, too. He didn’t appear to be aggressive; instead, he was staring at Phoebe and gently pawing at the glass, trying to figure out who the tiny cat in the window was.”
OMG-hee! Look at the big kitty gently pawing at the door! He wants to give the little kitty a huggy-wuggy!
SO ADORBZ! The puma pawing at the door wasn’t testing its strength to see if he could snag a quick meal, those were totes signals of love! Teehee!
Felid predators of pre-history: They will eat you
If you’re in need of a palate cleanser after all that sugar, the BBC’s Discover Wildlife has a rundown of prehistoric cats and their particularly fascinating proto-cat ancestors, some of whom looked more classically cat-like than several species of true cats. Isn’t convergent evolution cool?
There’s the famous smilodon, the saber-toothed cat, xenosmilus, the so-called shark-toothed cat, and homotherium, the scimitar-toothed cat. Outdoing each other with increasingly sword-like teeth was apparently a big thing in the felid world back then.
There’s also the cave lion, the last of the UK’s big cats, and miracinonyx, the American cheetah, but did you know that simbakubwa, the “great lion” of Africa, topped out at almost 3,000 pounds?
Simbakubwa and dinictis were examples of “false cats.” That is to say, they were not part of the felid lineage, but closely resembled cats in body plan and behavior through convergent evolution. Nature found a niche, and several different species filled it for a time.
Dinictis in particular looks strikingly like modern big cats, which makes it even more surprising to learn it’s not part of the genetic lineage of the felid line.
Finally — or firstly — there’s proailurus, the first cat or “dawn cat,” from which all true felidae species can trace their lineage. Appearing almost 31 million years ago proailurus enjoyed napping, climbing trees and eating Temptations. Okay, we made that last part up. But still. If proailurus were around today, it would probably go just as crazy for the kitty crack as our house panthers do.
Top image via Youtube.
Pain In The Bud 
Fascinating! That was pretty wild with Phoebe and the AF puma. And the prehistoric “cats” were fun to learn about. It’s interesting they didn’t belong in the feline category.
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I’m glad my snark didn’t ruin it for you. I was just bewildered by the Parade writer’s take that the cat and puma were “friends,” rather than the puma checking out a potential lunch.
re: prehistoric cats. Only some of them weren’t in the felidae family, but I think all are feliformia/feliform. It’s like how mongoose, civets and meerkats are feliform but not felidae.
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I felt the same way and thought the snark was appropriate. LOLOL🤣😂
Oooooh, I see. Thank you for explaining. 🙂
Tell Little Buddy that Josie-Pye, Max and Binx meow their hellos.
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Great article. In the end, big or small, cats are cats are cats are cats – and don’t we love them for that!! 🐱 ❤
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A while ago I wrote something about the shockingly diverse number of proto-elephants cooked up by evolution, and I really should update it and post it here.
Some of those species were absolutely bonkers — four tusks, tusks that looked like shovels, massive elephants bigger than the ones in the Lord of the Rings with multiple sets of tusks that looked like they could impale 20 men each, miniature elephants, etc.
We usually think of mammoths and elephants, but there are so many more. Nature is wild. Same deal with cats. I think there are something like 40 main extant species, with substantially more sub-species, but over more than 30 million years there have been some really weird examples.
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Fortunate that the door was locked; if not, someone would have got hurt. Probably the one taking the film, as I’m sure that sweet little house cat would have scarpered at the first sign of trouble – cats are canny like that!
Thank you for revealing to me that cave lions once roamed around my patch, If only….
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I didn’t even think of that, but you’re right. My cat would have bolted right behind my legs, like he always does when he’s terrified.
As I’m sure you know, there are some people who are absolutely convinced big cats are roaming around the UK. They’re basically Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.
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Yes, stories do emerge in the media from time to time of these mysterious, panther-like critters. I think many of the reports are from people who crave mystery, and are desperate to escape from our mundane existence into a place that is more exciting and unpredictable. Dreams are always more fun than the real world!
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