There are socialized individuals that can be handled by their trainers, but yeah they're not house cats, they haven't spent thousands of years adapting to humans, and they will casually maul you.
It's probably sick. That's unfortunately pretty much the only time a wild animal will react like that.
I suppose there is an outside chance it's domesticated and got out of its pen.
Yeah. I got a leg scar from a domestic cat that I've raised from kittendom, who'd easily have ripped my face if she could reach it*. A wild, larger, and more powerful version of that seems like a bad idea.
*because I was holding a kitten that she never saw before. Yup. Fuck you Kika, I love you but you're a bloody arsehole.
The biggest mistake anyone can make with a 10 pound domestic housecat is to underestimate one. Cats seriously punch far above their weight. Like someone welded a bunch of razor blades to a flying, out of control angle grinder that always knows which way is down. A cat can ruin your day quickly.
This!
I love my sweet boy and he's so gentle and kind 99% of the time. But sometimes he choses violence.
He is the reason I think all people who keep big cats as pets are not logical.
I think he's Puma Messi, he's been hand-raised from a cub and has medical conditions that prevent him from being able to live wild and also make him smaller and less energetic than most pumas. I'm not a fan of keeping wild animals as pets, but they appear to treat him with love and kindness and give him the individual attention and care he needs, although I didn't do a deep dive.
Yes, and he was going to be euthanized by the zoo because of his medical issues. He was rescued by a Russian couple who runs the youtube channel "i_am_puma", starring Messi.
I looked it up and wow, that's crazy. Messi is basically naturally domesticated. If the medical conditions are genetic, he could be the start of a lineage of house pumas.