Midtown can get wild after dark

[unapatriciated]

ATLANTA -- A wild cat captured in Midtown Atlanta Thursday morning is a male serval, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources said.

The animal was originally identified as an ocelot by officials with Fulton County Animal Control. Officials with the DNR said the two breeds are extremely similar, but that the animal appears to be a serval.

The serval is a wild cat, native to Africa. Servals are not permitted to be kept as pets in homes in the state of Georgia. The animals may be kept on permitted wildlife preserves or public facilities.

The animal is expected to be transfered to the DNR. The DNR will place the animal in an appropriate facility.

The spotting of the serval, named Ozzy, caused a stir in the 11Alive Information Center early Thursday morning, with viewers calling about a possible leopard in the Midtown Atlanta area. One look at the 30-pound spotted cat and it was hard to call it anything else. But that's where the mystery began.

It turns out that the serval ran off two days earlier while under the supervision of his caretaker. The rare cat's owners were out of town, Fulton County Animal Control officials said.

http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=118368&catid=40

video here - sorry for the commercial
http://www.11alive.com/video/default.aspx?aid=96446

Glad we didn't meet up with this guy when we were out and about in Midtown Thursday night.

[Lasher]

1. Serval

[bitchkitty]

2. Beautiful animal -

he's probably partly tame, which is a shame, really. He'll never be free again, poor little guy. Even if someone was nice enough to pay to relocate him to his natural environment, he'd die on his own. Keeping healthy wild animals is just wrong, no matter how well-intentioned.

[unapatriciated]

3. couldn't agree more

no matter how well-intentioned, he will never be fully domesticated and after living in captivation can never survive in the wild.

[kenny blankenship]

4. It was probably somebody's breeding stud in a wild-domestic cat crossbeeding business

The resulting offspring are called Savannah cats and go for thousands of dollars, depending on whether they are F1 (1st generation crossbeeds) F2, or F3. I don't know anything about this case, but if nobody steps forward to claim it as lost property you can be pretty sure it was a cross breeder operating without the relevant licenses, permits, etc.

Who mistakes -what kind of idiot!- misidentifies a serval for an ocelot, I ask you, who?!?!