This Space for Rent

I can’t see any similarities here.

Compare our cat Leo (felis s. catus) ...

... to a couple of his cousins (felis s. lybica) 1000 times removed ...

When we got Leo and Mavis, I was struck by just how big Leo was compared to all of the other cats in the house, and just how long his legs are compared to, once again, all of the other cats in the house. I thought he might be about the same size as a wild cat, so I looked for some pictures of african and european wildcats (african because that's the likely ancester of all domestic cats, european because it's likely that there was some interbreeding there before his ancesters were dumped onto a ship and transported to North America.) It was kind of shocking to see that both of the new cats are so close to the appearance of their very distant ancesters; if it wasn't for the teeny detail that felis sylvestris doesn't exist in the Americas except as a migrant, and for the equally teeny detail that he is about as tame as a cat can be (he is right now curled up next to me dozing and occasionally stirring when he feels a need to be petted) I'd think that we was a real wild cat that somehow got into the city.

In any case, it's kind of spooky how, after so many generations of domestication, that he can still look so much like his wild relatives.