Big cats aren't fucking around about being this week's most important animals on the internet
You know how it is: It’s Friday night, you’re feeling frisky, and you just want to cut loose while looking good. You’re a large cat on the internet, and it’s time to go to work.
Indeed, it was a good week for the internet’s sexiest feline swingers, with a number of news stories cropping up about kitties, big and small, making the scene and being seen. First up: A report from Motherboard, proving what we’ve all always known, deep in our hearts: Jaguars love Calvin Klein’s Obsession.
This particular, very important fact comes courtesy of non-invasive researchers trying to find a way to get the big cats they study to hang out longer in front of cameras, so that they can be identified by their distinctive fur patterns. (Did you know that they’re as individualized as a human’s fingerprint? Science!) It turns out that Klein’s signature brand is, well, catnip for the big cats; not because they’re aficionados of the distinctive stink of an ’80s nightclub, mind you, but because it literally smells like another cat’s asshole.
Or, to be more precise, like another cat’s rectum-adjacent scent glands; Obsession, like a number of top-shelf scents, contains a synthetic version of civetone, a musky pheromone produced by the African civet. (Not to be confused with the Asian palm civet, which is the one we traditionally force-feed coffee beans to to produce civet coffee, because people are just great.) When jaguars smell the stuff, they apparently think, “Oh, hey, another cat was here,” and take a minute to rub their own scent around the area, making taping and identification much easier for the researchers. Scientists were quick to emphasize that wearing Obsession probably won’t make you an obvious target for jaguar attacks at the zoo, though; not only will you obviously be surrounded by a protective ring of people drawn to your cat-ass musk, but the diversity of scents on display will almost certainly dilute the effect on the animals themselves.
Speaking of big kitties doing their thing: Researchers have also captured some new footage of “The Clashindarroch Beast,” a massive member of Scotland’s native (and endangered) Scottish wildcat species. It’s a little hard to see from the black and white video, but this guy is apparently about four feet long, and was spotted roaming the Scottish wilderness. The species—also known as the Highland tiger, which, badass—has been brought to the brink of extinction, both because of reduced hunting areas, and also increased hybridization with the domesticated cat, which it resembles, if your regular cat was about twice as big and willing to claw your eyes out if you got in the way of its hunt.
Not that you have to be big to be a suitably glam feline in the modern world; take, for example, the adorably bougie Japanese cat who’s technically named Torako, but who typically goes by the name “Lambo cat.” That’s because her owner likes to prop her up on the dashboard of his Italian supercar, complete with fancy outfits, the better to draw the world’s attention to her fabulous nature. As noted by our friends at Jalopnik, the most striking thing about Lambo cat is how utterly chill she is, gliding around speedways and down the freeway like it was the most natural thing in the world, because it is, because she’s goddamn Lambo cat.
So, there you have it, folks: Cats aren’t fucking around these days. They’re fashionable, they’re fast, and they’re obviously out-pacing dogs in every metric we’d care to measure—
Oh, wait, what?
Madame Eyebrows, we’re sorry.
Madame Eyebrows, no!
Oh god, what have we done?