China - farmer mistakenly adopts an Asiatic leopard cat thinking it was a tabby domestic cat

This has happened before in other countries. I can remember a guy adopting a bobcat kitten in America thinking that he was rescuing a cute tabby kitten until the kitten's behavior made him suspicious that it was something else.

It confirms what I have always said that the cute wild cats and wild kittens can be pretty wild and the sounds they make are sometimes extraordinary. Nothing like a domestic cat.

The Asiatic leopard cat is actually wilder than the bobcat so I expect that this farmer quickly realised that the cute kitten that he had adopted was far too wild to be a stray domestic kitten. He stumbled across the ball of fur while working his hillside farm in south-west China's Yunnan province, we are told by The Sun newspaper.

He had spotted the kitten strolling alone and thought that he or she had been abandoned perhaps and decided to take him home. He quickly realised that this was not a stray domestic cat.

He struggled to care for the kitten as he would have because these little balls of fluff are very wild. And the Asiatic leopard cat is known to be particularly independent-minded.

He consulted the police and realised what he had done. He had adopted a leopard cat. It is an endangered species across the planet and in China. They are protected in China.

He let the police take the cat from him and look after it. The video tells us that the police will hand the cat over to a rescue center where the intention is to prepare the animal for release into the wild.

I am not sure about the way the police are handling the kitten so much apparently, which can only make the task of releasing the cat into the wild harder.

They do look a little bit like tabby cats. Only the markings are a little more intense and you will see white fur next to the dark tabby markings on the head. Although in kittens the markings are less distinct.  But these higher contrast markings indicate wild cat and not tabby. That is a giveaway for me.

They believe that the mother was out hunting while leaving her kitten in a safe place. The kitten perhaps wandered off and then was taken by this man. The mother would have returned to where her kitten was and found that she/he had gone. It is almost certain that the mother had not abandoned her offspring.