Scottish Wildcat

[Steve2022]

Hi, I live in Scotland in the countryside and have a cat that slowly moved into the garden.

Is it a Scottish wildcat or Hybrid as he looks familiar to them when you Google it

[fjm]

From all I have ever heard about genuine wildcats I think it is extremely unlikely that one would choose to live close to human habitation. More likely to be a stray or feral, I suspect.

[Ruth B]

From what I have heard the only true way to know is with genetic testing, domestic cats and wild cats are very close and the number of hybrids only make the matter worse.

I believe there may be organisations that will try and identify true wild cats and help with the spaying and neutering of feral domestic cats and hybrids in areas that have known Wild Cat populations to try and protect them, it might be worth seeing if you can find one and have them look at any photos.

[papa cat]

I would say that the one in your picture is a feral Tabby as most of the coat pattern is spotted rather than striped. A genuine Scottish wildcat has few or no spots.
Compare these pictures.
This one is a hybrid

[papa cat]

This one is a Scottish Wildcat

[papa cat]

This one is a feral cat

[Steve2022]

Thanks for the replies.

I always wondered who it was leaving ripped up rabbit bodies in the garden. Then I saw bits of rabbit in the bush he likes to stay in

It took about a year to get him to come out the bushes and probably another year for him to trust us and claim the decking on our log cabin and then a year later he has access to our sunroom to live in. Now a year on from that he's friends with our house cat (that was crying at our back door as a kitten a few months after we moved in).

Our house cat now goes into the garden and they walk around together and do nose touches but there is quite a size difference.

[Steve2022]

He's got a nice big head

[fjm]

He looks to be unneutered with that sturdy, muscular neck and massive head. But if he were a wildcat it wouldn't just be the rabbits that were in shreds - so would your hand if it got anywhere near him! Very handsome cat.

[Mollycat]

Maybe there is some SWC in the mix with a bit of feral moggy, but that is not a SWC - for a start SWC has at least 75% unbroken stripes and I know the pics are a bit blurry but I don't see a single unbroken stripe there. Are you certain he's a he? Again could be picture quality but there looks to be a lot of gingery colouring on the body.

I think we all like to think our cats have something exotic or in some other way special about them but really, though it's a known problem that SWC is becoming diluted with domestic cat genes, Momma cat is going to be a critical difference. If Momma is domestic, even if she's feral, the kittens will be brought up wary and defensive, but if she is truly wild descended from generations of wild, you'd be extremely lucky to ever catch a glimpse of her or her kittens.

If you have a friendly cat that is happy with you and your other pets, if it's taken you a great deal of time and patience to win this cat's trust, you've done a great job and that's brilliant. In all honesty if a SWC did come near you and human habitation, the best thing you could do to support the species' future is to spook it away to maximise the chances of keeping the SWC going. The more they interact with humans and pet cats the faster they will simply become no more than a gene contributor to our pets.