Posted on 07/10/2026 6:10:46 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
On an hour-long drive from Vancouver to the heart of B.C.’s Fraser Valley, I contemplate the most professional way to ask if I can pet this cat I’m about to meet. There’s journalistic value to being able to describe its fur, I imagine arguing, as I drive past bucolic fields and cheerless industrial parks. In the end, I don’t need to ask at all. “Do you want to feed him?” Mike Hopcraft says, holding out a dish of raw chunks of beef and a pair of long metal tweezers, as the cat glowers beside me.
My commitment to gonzo cat journalism is wavering at the sight of my subject, who isn’t a typical pet. He’s a serval: a wild cat native to Africa who is, improbably, lounging on a grey couch in the nondescript warehouse that houses an animal rescue centre in Abbotsford. His name, even more improbably, is Gary. He growls and hisses impatiently as I tentatively extend a cube of meat before lunging across my lap to reach it. While Gary eats, I stroke him gently; his tawny fur, streaked and spotted with black, is as plush as I imagined.
In the wild, servals are sinuous, slender and long-legged, like deadly feline supermodels with huge, pointed ears. At a sprint, they can reach speeds of 80 kilometres per hour. They leap two metres to snatch birds out of the air, and pounce on rodents or snakes with deadly accuracy; an individual serval is more likely to catch its prey than a pride of lions hunting together. An adult serval weighs up to 40 pounds, roughly the same size as a coyote or a six-year-old child. If Gary were to sit on my lap like a regular cat, I would have to look up at him — a terrifying prospect, now that I’ve seen him demolish a beef cube. For some people, I can imagine, this is the appeal. “It’s basically the biggest cat you can get that looks like a cheetah, without being a fucking cheetah,” Hopcraft says.
Gary, however, does not look like a cheetah, or his wild cousins in Africa. He is pear-shaped and shamboling, his gait hindered by degenerative disc disease, a common affliction among servals in captivity. He also suffers from feline hyperesthesia syndrome, which causes cats extreme sensitivity to touch around their back and tail and can lead to self-mutilation. Shortly after Hopcraft rescued him in January 2025, Gary chewed his tail off while confined. Hopcraft has avoided caging him since, and lets him roam free, like the world’s biggest barn cat.
He now takes Prozac, stuffed surreptitiously into one of his daily beef cubes, for anxiety. He was declawed as a kitten — a brutal, previously common elective surgery, outlawed in B.C. in 2018, in which the claw and last bone of each toe is amputated — which means if he escaped, as pet servals often do, he would be helpless.
Gary spent the first nine years of his life on Vancouver Island, until his owners divorced and surrendered him; Hopcraft, who runs an exotic animal rescue called Wild Education, took him in him after some hesitation. “I’ve worked with servals in the past on film sets and they’re crazy,” Hopcraft says. But it became clear that nobody else wanted him, so Hopcraft couldn’t say no. “In the end, we took him in, and he’s been doing amazing.”
When he’s not on the couch, he wanders among the aquariums and enclosures in the back of the rescue centre, full of Hopcraft’s other rescues: ferrets and chinchillas, tortoises and iguanas, scorpions and tarantulas, an inquisitive blue-and-gold macaw. There are hundreds of animals here, but only one of them is now illegal to buy or sell in B.C.: Gary.
In May, the province amended its Controlled Alien Species Regulation to prohibit the “breeding, transport and future ownership” of non-domestic, non-native cat species, a category that includes servals, caracals, ocelots and a number of other species. (Large exotic cats, like tigers and lions, have been illegal to possess in B.C. since 2010.) Hopcraft and other exotic cat lovers can keep their pets, provided they apply for a permit by May 2027. Doing so requires signing away their rights to visitors. These cats can only interact with members of their households; in other words, my visit with Gary will soon be prohibited by provincial law. Violating the law could mean a fine of up to $250,000, a two-year prison sentence or both.
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An undomesticated wild animal native to a continent different from your own is quite the tortured definition of “a pet.”
They’re beautiful but more difficult the purer the strain. Probably a 1/4 serval and 3/4 feline would be most manageable.
The writer doesn’t realize that he is regarded as about 500 cubes of beef when Gary is hungry. The rescue guy needs to start a bona fide licensed zoo. See if Gary can reproduce with a female. Just needs about 10 acres of BC land, and some modern zoo open field, no escape, structure and a contract with a vet service and some assistants to feed and water the beasties.....lots of money out there...
I agree. But if you read the article, ‘Gary’ was rescued when his ‘Mom & Dad’ got divorced and surrendered him.
Wonder if they ‘surrendered’ their children as well when they divorced?
I hate animal abuse in any form, and Gary needs to be the Poster Child for that in Canada.
*Que the ultra-sad Sarah Mc Lachlan music*
When those ‘sad puppy shows’ come on, begging for money, I always change the channel. I know this stuff happens, but I can’t bear it!
I wish Gary the best. At least he landed with someone that cares. This guy rescues all kinds of wild critters that people once had as ‘pets.’
Excellent idea. A zoo wouldn’t be as comfy as the couch, but I’ll bet Gary would be much happier in that environment.
He has no claws, so release into the wild would be a death sentence for him. :(
After breeding them in captivity about ten generations you can produce a sort of domesticated version but they are no longer coyotes or foxes.
Of course, having said that..... I really really want a cheetah. But I think cheetahs are actually domesticated animals that have been left to go feral. We should redomesticate them.
Because I really want a cheetah.
There are a lot of idiots out there. It’s why “do not pet the fuzzy cows” signs/stickers are a thing around Yellowstone.
Check the internet of rich Saudis riding in their exotic car (top down) with their pet cheetah tooling down the road.
Would be a lifetime project. I know, I have 3 regular domesticated cats. Having a serval or cheetah would be overpowering. Caracal or bobcat would be hard too.
Beautiful!
A Savannah Cat is a cross between a Serval and a domestic cat. I wonder if they are also outlawed?
Not in the US.
Cleaning the litter box would be a job
Depends on state laws i think.
My SIL in Arizona has one. Not at all friendly with strangers.
A serval cat?
Get a civet cat.
They poop gold.
A serval cat?
Get a civet cat.
They poop gold.
I once house sat for a friend on vacation and he had 2 Caracals this cat’s smaller cousin. Those things were jumping over the furniture and on top of cabinets. They didn’t seem aggressive but then I didn’t try petting them either.
I like the way you think about this beautiful animal.
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