Africa’s Smallest and Deadliest Wildcat Is Making a Comeback in Texas

Rhaegal and Morgan have been on a date for a few weeks now. Morgan seems sleepy. He yawns; his eyes become glassy slits. Rhae, on the other hand, is all energy. She prowls around the yard, vocalizing, crouching, puffing outward, almost spherical—all two and a half pounds of her. “She’s running around like a little madwoman,” says Amanda Collins, the carnivore curator at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, in Glen Rose, an hour southwest of Fort Worth.Nine-year-old Rhae and twelve-year-old Morgan, two black-footed cats, recently matched on a dating app—at least that’s how Collins explains it to me. In reality it’s a genetics database, also known as a studbook, used by breeding programs like this one. “They don’t get to pick who they want to mate…

The post Africa’s Smallest and Deadliest Wildcat Is Making a Comeback in Texas appeared first on Texas Monthly.