On the basis of morphology, this animal birthed by a feral cat in North Carolina in 2015, is a likely opossum-cat hybrid (Felis cattus x Didelphis americana. More pictures are available here.
Opossum-cat Hybrids
Mammalian Hybrids
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Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true; Real becomes not-real where the unreal's real.
—The Dream of the Red Chamber
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Judging from morphology, animals described as being "Lykoi breed cats" (such as the one pictured above) are likely opossum-cat hybrids (Felis cattus x Didelphis americana). This has not, however, been confirmed by DNA analysis or by controlled breeding experiments. The animal pictured above was birthed in North Carolina in 2015 by a feral domestic cat, in a litter of otherwise normal offspring. Such a litter could be produced by the mother first mating with a domestic tomcat, which fertilized most of her eggs, and then with an opossum, which fertilized one. This is an intersuperordinal cross.
Virginian Opossum(Didelphis virginiana)
Rafinesque(1783-1840)
The early American naturalist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1821, p. 113; see also Rafinesque 1820, p. 85), a professor at the University of Louisville, seems to have been the last and only scholar to report hybridization between a female cat and a male Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), which he describes as “well-attested” (“bien avéré”):
A cat was left in a cabin in the Kentucky woods, abandoned for several months. This cabin was perfectly isolated, being several leagues [a league was about three miles] from any other. There were no cats within eighteen miles. Upon his return to the cabin, the owner found his cat nursing a litter of five little monsters, resembling cats in body and fur, but having the head, the feet and tail of a Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginianus to naturalists). The animals lived and were shown as a curiosity in all the region; but they died young and without propagating themselves. One conjectures, with reason, that the cat, quite isolated, abandoned, and living on birds, mice, and moles during the interim, aroused a male opossum, while in heat, for lack of a mate of her own kind—for there are no wild cats in Kentucky (those so called are lynx) — and was impregnated by him. But it is quite singular that a union between two such different animals — so different that they belong not only to different genera, but also to different families, in fact, orders — was fruitful. The sole similarity between the two, it seems, is that of size. [Translated by E. M. McCarthy. Original French.]
Most hybrids reported by Rafinesque were rather mundane, but he did describe one other unusual one.
See also the related article “Possum-cat Hybrids.”
Table of contents >>
A list of cat crosses
The following is a list of reported cat crosses. Some of these crosses are much better documented than others (as indicated by the reliability arrow). Indeed, some might seem completely impossible. But all have been reported at least once. The links below are to separate articles. Additional crosses, not listed here, are covered on the cat hybrids page.
A dog-cow hybrid?
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By the same author: Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World, Oxford University Press (2006).