I'm the first to admit I'm not a huge fan of cats;  mainly due to the problems they cause in Australia in relation to killing off native animals, not to mention I get mighty sick of them using my yard as a toilet and stirring up our dogs.

Why is that dogs have to be registered with local council yet cats don't? If my dogs wound up in somebody's yard, there would be hell to pay, yet the neighbor's cats can come and go as they please?

Yet I digress.

I was horrified to learn of a hybrid "supercat", aka Savannah cat, that's now hitting our shores. It's a mix of a Serval, an Asian Leopard cat and a domestic cat. A Srval is a medium sized wild cat from Africa that grows to around 20kg or 40lbs. The Asian Leopard cat is a smaller wild cat.

Savannah cat

All three species are excellent hunters; so mix them all together and you get a killing machine that can jump 8 feet high from a standing start and weighs in at around 11kg or 23lbs (but there have been some in the 30 - 40lb range).

Unlike many other breeds of cat, this one isn't afraid of water. The Savannah cat is also very intelligent. All this makes for a disaster waiting to happen in a country such as Australia. Domestic cats become feral very quickly and I have no doubt the Savannah cat would adapt to the wild even more readily. A bigger cat such as the Savannah needs more food; i.e. more hunting and killing of native species.

The Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre is currently trying to convince the Australian government to ban the importation of hybrid supercats and I certainly agree that for the sake of our native wildlife, let's keep this species out of Australia altogether - we just don't need it here.

Related:

Greening your cat