NORTH AMERICAN PUMA
​aka - Cougar, Mountain Lion
Kachina was born July 19, 2018. She came to live at Cat Tales at 2 months of age. She became part of the Cat Tales family in September 2018.

Now that she's a year old, she lives out in her own enclosure next to her grandmother, Jewel!  It's undeniable that Kachina is our wild little princess.  All of her energy and personality has fully come out through the last year, leaving her a headstrong and kooky puma.  She loves to play hunt our keepers, and playing with her next door neighbor Sibella through the enclosure walls.  

Her enclosure is full of toys and furniture, and is constantly receiving more and more upgrades -- including a little pumpkin patch growing outside of her space!  
Jewel was born in the spring 2007. Jewel is Kachina's grandmother, and came to live with us at Cat Tales around the end of September 2018. 

At first she was privately owned by someone who declawed her front paws, and after this she was taken in by a wildlife facility in Kalispel, Montana for most of her life. 

Now that she lives with us, she's given all the one on one attention that she desires, along with lots of space for privacy and quiet.  You'll often see her coming up to the front of her enclosure to sit with one of our zookeepers.  In fact you might see us giving her front paws massages!  While we don't approve of declawing, the fact that she has no claws on her front paws means that we can touch them without risk of her using claws to hurt us.  

She's one of our sweetest girls, and a very good grandma to Kachina, her next door neighbor.  
Hope and Jackson are some of our newest arrivals.  These two puma cubs come from the same facility as Kachina and Jewel, and are, in fact, Kachina's siblings from a more recent litter!  

The brother and sister pair came to us in late 2019 as very small cubs, and have since then spent most of their days interacting with staff members in hopes that they'll learn basic commands while they're young.  But every once in awhile, their handlers will bring them out to play where the public can see all of their fantastic jumps, races, and silly sibling squabbles for themselves.  

For anyone hoping to tell them apart, Hope is the smaller of the two (on top in this photo) and Jackson is bigger, with a much pinker nose.  (Beneath his sister in this photo).  

NORTH AMERICAN PUMA

Often referred to as cougars or mountain lions, the puma is a big cat that averages around 1.5 - 2.7 m (5 - 9 ft.) and can weigh an average of 68 kg for males (150 lbs), 45 kg for females (100 lbs).  Often their status as a big cat is argued for the simple fact that a puma is unable to roar, lacking the specialized larynx.  Instead pumas can make a variety of sounds you would often hear from a domestic house cat, and are also known for their sudden 'screaming' sounds - often misheard as being cries from other animals.  Most pumas have tawny coats, though silvery or red varieties are known to exist.  Their underbellies are a creamy white, with dark spots sometimes on their flanks and tail.  These spots are never fully black, as pumas lack the melanistic qualities to create a pitch black color.

What makes them stand apart from many other big cats is their ability to live in nearly any ecosystem throughout the wild.  From mountains, deserts, to sea level, so long as a puma can find access to prey and shelter the species can grow.  And as obligate carnivores (animals that must live off of only meat), there are plenty of options for a puma to eat.  They will devour insects all the way up the food chain to a creature weighing 500 kg.  Deer are their preferable prey.  However, there have been noted clashes between pumas and farmers when they attempt to kill and eat farm animals after having little to no success on hunts.  When they do successfully hunt and kill, a cougar will drag the carcass back to his or her shelter where they'll hide it and eat it in the coming days.  

​​If you would like to adopt one of our pumas, the cost is currently $50.00 US dollars monthly.  This money takes care of any veterinary check ups, habitat enrichment and feeding - all the things a happy puma needs.