I Dont Even Know Anymore

domestic cats, on the other hand, do know how to make friends. they are friendly to the point that lots of feral cats live in colonies— the females hang out together, even raise kids together, and the males like to spend nonsexual time with their baby mommas. they groom each other, play around, and have a particular tail position to signal to one another— straight up with the tip curled— that they’re friendly and happy to see each other. cats learned how to be chill with each other in order to take full advantage of human food sources: an ancient granary supplies enough rats for a lot of cats, as does a modern lady with a big bag of frisky bits, so it would be a waste of time and energy for any one cat to try and stake the entire foodsource out for exclusive use. less fighting means more eating and resting which means a longer, nicer life and a lot more kittens. 

so this stray cat, she obviously has no colony if she’s wandering around and sneaking into zoo enclosures, so she’s like ‘hey! there’s food here! what up, other cat, let’s be friends, let’s be friends and share that food’. and the bobcat is like ‘??????’ because actually wild cats are pretty cautious about initiating hostilities and anything new and aggressive makes them very worried. and the domestic cat is like ‘haha cool, ok, we’re friends now, big guy. no problems.’ and the bobcat is like ‘????? well…?? ok?’ and then they are friends. 

the super interesting thing about most wild cat species is they don’t really have the capacity to make friends on their own, especially outside of sibling bonds, but, if someone comes along and does all the friend-making themselves, they’ll totally roll with it. zoo cats can get really attached to their caregivers— or, in this case, a very confident little calico demonstrating exactly why her species has been so darn successful over the last nine thousand years . 

LOOK

A VIDEO OF THEM GROOMING AND HEADBUTTING EACH OTHER!!!

This is Linda the lynx and Dusya the cat from the Leningrad Zoo. They were introduced as kittens around 2007ish and have been living together ever since.

2. In 2015 in Novosibirsk, a lynx kitten named Nika was rejected by her mother. A worker at the zoo had a pet cat who had recently given birth to kittens, so she brought her cat to the zoo, and the cat adopted Nika and nursed her. I can’t find word on what happened to any of them after that.

3. In 2022 in the Siberian Zoo in Irkutsk, three domestic kittens were found abandoned in a box on zoo grounds. Staff put the kittens in with Alena, a lynx, who adopted them and took care of them. When they were old enough, the zoo found adoptive families for the three kittens.