Felines’ friend: Man rescues wild kittens from auction
Two wild kittens had the purr-fect end to an even wilder journey that uprooted them from their natural habitat to potentially a dinner plate, until a kindhearted man stepped in
Zhang, a resident of Guiyang, southwest China’s Guizhou Province, gave two leopard-looking wild cats a new lease of life when he rescued them from an illegal auction on a roadside.
The young man was heading back to Guiyang from a trip to southwestern city of Chongqing, when a suspicious gathering on the side of a highway grabbed his attention. To his surprise, people were bidding on the two leopard-like cats. Worried they might end up in the wrong hands, or even worse in a hot pot, he forked out 1,000 yuan (151 US dollars) to bring them home with him.
“They looked wild. When I tried to pet them, they hissed at me, warning me to back off. It was terrifying,” Zhang’s mom recalled.
Unable to keep them locked in a cage, Zhang decided to release them back to nature with the help of experts. He reached out to the local wildlife administration on Sunday morning for assistance in putting them back where they belonged. The officers told Zhang that his wild kittens were actually Prionailurus bengalensis, more commonly known as leopard cats –a species whose existence is threatened majorly by mass hunting for fur trade.
China’s State Forestry Administration lists the leopard cats in the index of the terrestrial wildlife that are either beneficial, of great economic value, or should be valued as science study assets. The felines are also considered as a protected species according to CITES Appendix II, which includes species not necessarily threatened with extinction, but whose survival is endangered by trade.
On average, over 150,000 pieces with leopard cat fur were sold each year in the last century in China, according to official data.