Ever had a Caracal sleep on your lap?

This last weekend I had time in my own flat, for once!  So I spent it lazing around like a cat, enjoying the sun, reading my books and watching the odd film.  Perrrfect.

I am not really a cat person but they do seem to like me.  Normal moggies seem to find my lap attractive, as do the not so normal ones - I have woken up to find a cheetah lying across my legs.  Admittedly it was a house trained one but my I had lost the feeling in my legs and the same cheetah had licked me on the face the previous night (which was quite painful).  But my most memorable experience was having a fully grown male caracal curl up and fall asleep in my lap.  Caracals are the cats with the very pointy ears and black ear tufts and have 20 different muscles in their ears which enables them to detect prey.

So here was this rare cat, snuggling on my lap without a care in the world.  Admittedly it had been brought in to be cared for as it had been injured, but it was going to be released back into the wild. Caracals are quite large cats to have sitting on your lap, it is commonly known as the Persian Lynx or African Lynx, despite the fact that it is not a lynx at all.  And I came to appreciate the size of it, the longer it sat on my lap. These cats are tenacious hunters and they have been known to bring down an ostrich, the fact that they can keep up with an ostrich is surprising in itself. The caracal mainly hunts rodents, birds (which it can catch in flight by leaping into the air), antelopes, gazelles and rabbits.  But this one was living the life or Riley by being hand fed impala.

A few days later my new friend was put into a large holding cage and after two weeks he no longer recognised me as he hissed at me from the back of the cage.  He was released back into the wild fully recovered, having completely forgotten about impala steaks, a secure bed and about me. 

A pretty adaptable creature.