About two months ago, Florencia Lobo and her brother were on a trip to Tucumán, a province in northwestern Argentina. They find two cats and their mother on the side of the road. Since the death of the mother cat, the siblings have decided to bring the kittens home with them. Florencia later said she and her brother thought the mother was an abandoned pet and had just given birth.
The cat eventually died, but the male survived and Florence named him Tito. He looked healthy, but Florencia took him to the vet for a check-up. The vet noticed that Tito didn’t look like a normal cat and recommended that he be checked out at Horo Muli Nature Reserve.
The nature reserve staff confirmed the veterinarian’s suspicions. Tito was not a house cat; It was a type of small wild cat called the jaguarundi (Puma yaguarundi). Weighing between eight and 16 pounds, the jaguarundi is about the size of a large house cat and currently ranges in size from northern Mexico to South America. According to the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife, the jaguarundi was once found as far north as southern Texas. Unfortunately, the jaguarundi is an endangered species.
The Horco Molle Nature Reserve is keeping Tito and they hope to release him back into the wild when he gets old.
In 2016, for example, a Chinese couple bought what they thought was a Tibetan Mastiff puppy. Two years later, the “dog” weighed 250 pounds and began to walk on its hind legs. Eventually, terrified owners transferred her to the Yunnan Wildlife Rescue Center, which identified the animal as an Asiatic black bear.
Sometimes the reverse happens and a domestic animal is mistaken for a wild animal. Such was the case with Spock the Maine Coon in 2016. He weighed 27 pounds and was nearly four feet tall – and some people were convinced he was a Bobcat.
