Posts tagged "leopard"

That feline lightsaber duel from earlier really got me in the mood to see more cats playing with lasers, so here's another great video from Big Cat Rescue. The last time we checked in with BCR, they showed us how the big cats (ie. tigers, lions, leopards and jaguars) are really just like the domesticated cats we have at home. A tiger doesn't look so scary when he's chasing around a giant plastic ball. (Except they really can rip your throat out or eat you alive, so don't get cocky around one.) What other toys that our cats love work just as well on big cats? If you said "laser pointers," you are right! But it's not like you're some kind of genius. It says it right there in the title. Seriously, you are being really cocky today! Settle down.

Big cats. Lions, tigers, jaguars and leopards. The kings of the jungle and whatnot. Think about one. What do you see? Probably something pretty majestic. The magnificent beast sits regally upon some rock or something, the master of all he surveys. He is relaxed, but could strike at any moment. He is fierce and proud. If he could speak, his voice would probably be deep and resonant and demanding of your attention and respect. Like Dennis Haysbert's.

Or maybe your imagination conjures a lion on the hunt. Tearing across the plains in pursuit of some antelope, he snarls, bearing his fangs and his shiny claws. He takes down his prey in a flurry of blood and dust, standing over the kill and roaring his triumph as his pride draws near to feast.

Or alternatively, perhaps the cat you see in your mind is rolling around with a giant plastic doughnut like a big doofus, scuttling the image of the noble beast that those other cats we talked about work so hard to create.

Here's a home video of a leopard inexplicably riding shotgun in a passenger car down a Russian freeway.

Seeing something like this makes us wonder whether America really is as free a country as we like to think it is.

It also gets us thinking what Yakov Smirnoff would joke about it... "In post-communist Russia, you don't drive a Jaguar... a jaguar drives you!"

A Russian carjacking turned into a catjacking when the SUV's cargo included a rare leopard.

"We had been driving all night with the leopard in a travel cage. The plan was to take her to the vet. The driver was fiddling with the cage when two men jumped into the vehicle and threw us out. My suspicion is the theft was done to order," owner Mikhail Barakin told Britain's The Guardian.

Barakin, who heads a private television station in Saint Petersburg, was grooming the wild cat to star in TV commercials. He said the one-month-old cub -- a rare Amur Leopard -- is tame, but she's also highly endangered: There are less than 45 left on Russia's eastern border.

Barakin says the thieves can keep the car -- all he wants is his leopard back. He is offering a $150,000 reward for her safe return.

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