Budapest Zoo & Botanic Gardens, Budapest: We are die-hard Manul or Pallas’ cat lovers who flew to Budapest to check out the grumpiest cats in the world. There were originally 2 — Bohus and Lucy and now they have a newborn kitten, currently un-named. If you knew of their lineage, Bohus is Lucy’s grandfather and if you’re crying foul like we did, one of the sweet staff explained that there are only 4 in the neck of their woods for breeding. Hence the starved gene pool. Due to politics that extend even to the wildlife, the Russian Manuls are out of reach. Inbreeding is sometimes a leaky gene pool — kitty B, his nickname for now, has a birth defect. There’s a medical issue with his left eye.
Both Lucy and Kitty B are kept in a separate enclosure locked up. You can catch their silhouettes, and we truly strained for shots through the fence and another added layer of wood slits. One of the friendly staff saw us waiting for 3 hours to catch glimpses of Bohus, Lucy and kitty B and let us in the inner staff section where there was a tear in the wood slits — we had a small hole and a few spare minutes to snap pictures. Both Lucy and Kitty B are in high spirits, often engaging in spirited play. At some point, Kitty B came very curiously close to us without Lucy being motherly protective. Bohus spent most of his time hidden in his outpost and most of the interactions were from Lucy and Kitty B.
