Cincinnati Zoo 2003 - Indoor exhibits in the famous Cat House

May 2003

Indoor exhibits in the famous Cat House.

No mate, not a stupid question.

Some years ago a keeper at the Wuppertal Zoo in Germany who knew me, and knew also that I had just been to Cincinnati Zoo at the time, asked me if Cincinnati Zoo did have a black specimen of a small cat species I have forgotten the name of today (I'm getting old I guess) but in any case, they did and this is it.

It was one of the small Asian species but I just can't recall the name of it, no matter how much I try. But there are many members on this forum who have been more often to Cincinnati Zoo than I have, I'm sure someone will see this and come to our rescue.

AFAIK, they used to have a black Pampas Cat in the collection, I have heard somewhere she passed away in 2009. This might have been the solution...

Pampas Cat is it, thank you Jakub! And of course it lives in South America, not Asia!

Yes, they had the only pampas cats in the U.S. They originally had four, I think all four were black from what staff told me, but I could be wrong because the sign by the exhibit shows a typical colored one and it was clearly photographed in the same exhibit. Anyway, the two times I was there when they had them they had two blacks on exhibit together. Unfortunately, neither of their pairs ever produced offspring, so sadly pampas are now gone from our country.

Does anyone know if these pampas cats at Cincinnati were (Leopardus pajeros) or (Leopardus colocolo)?

Regarding the title of the photo, what made the Cincinnati cat house famous? I have read many scathing reviews of it here.

Regarding the cat, could it possibly be a Geoffrey's cat? I remember that there was a melanistic one at the Sacramento Zoo in the late 1980s. From the discussion here, it seems like maybe melanism is fairly common in some species of South American small cats?

Kilverstone, a zoo in England that specialised in South American species, used to have a melanistic Geoffroy’s cat. (Sadly this zoo closed about twenty years ago; it is sorely missed.)