May 12, 2005
What's Up, Pussycat? Whoa!
By SUSAN SAULNY

DARJEERLING and Bunnicula are two kittens who prefer shrimp cocktails
and steak frites to pet food. They sleep on Burberry beds in their
Greenwich Village apartment and wore matching crystal-studded collars
until a few weeks ago, when they chewed off all the stones.

They live a life of luxury, to be sure, but it is life on the lam.

They are outlawed in New York City, members of a new designer breed
growing in popularity called the Savannah, an offspring of a wildcat -
the African serval - and the domestic house cat.

"If I have to move to New Jersey to keep these cats, I will," said their
owner, a 29-year-old hedge fund analyst who equates life in downtown
Manhattan with life itself. "That's how much I love them," she said,
speaking only on the condition of anonymity.

The cats - which can cost from $4,000 to $10,000 - are visually striking
with their long necks and oversized ears, and they can be intimidating.
They look like little leopards and grow to more than twice the size of
normal cats. They love to leap and splash in water, and they don't mind
taking long walks on a leash. Some people describe them as dogs in cats'
bodies.

"More than ever, everyone's been calling me about the Savannah, and I'm
like, 'What's going on?' " said Bash Dibra, an animal trainer in New
York whose sessions, at $300 to $500 an hour, are often the last resort
for people who cannot control their Savannahs.

Taking care of them on the sly - as New Yorkers must - can be tricky.
Across the country, however, the Savannah is not always illegal: a
hodgepodge of city and county regulations and state laws govern pets
that are part wild.

In New York authorities do not scour the streets for such pets. Owners
are often in hiding from their neighbors who might report them. For
instance Darjeerling and Bunnicula rarely appear outdoors in the light
of day. In an apartment on the Upper East Side, another Savannah named
Tiger is tended by the household help in the middle of the night. And
Kara LoDolce, who recently moved to a new town on Long Island with her
Savannah, Mazi, will not even tell her friends where she lives.

"It's hard to have, hard to keep," said Mr. Dibra, who calls that part
of the Savannah's appeal. It makes it "more mystical to own," he said.

New York City banned ownership of any wild or part-wild animals long
ago. The state followed suit in 2004. Bethany Schumann, an aide to
Assemblyman Paul D. Tonko, a Democrat from Amsterdam, who sponsored the
state law, said her office had heard from hundreds of angry cat owners
for and against the Savannah in the last couple of years.

"For whatever reason, these cats are cats many people would like to
have," she said. "There is some sort of wow factor to the 35-pound cat
in your Manhattan apartment."

But they come with too many unknowns, she added. "We have no idea what
this cat's habitat should be," Ms. Shumann said.

The cats are growing in popularity elsewhere in the country too. It is
hard to estimate exactly how many Savannahs are kept as pets. Their
numbers are surely small compared with the average cat. But animal
trainers, veterinarians and pet-business owners say they are seeing the
Savannah more frequently, while they were rare five years ago.

In Chicago, Cynthia A. King, a Savannah owner and breeder, said: "I had
to wait two years to get my kittens, and I had cash I was waving in the
air. For a first-generation pet, we're talking a $5,000 minimum
expenditure. That's how popular they are."

Julian Robertson, a breeder in Reidsville, N.C., said: "We've shipped
them to Alaska, we've shipped them to Austria. You name it, and we've
shipped them. We can't keep enough of them."

But owners are increasingly worried about restrictions. Chicago recently
considered a wide-ranging ban on exotic pets. So far the proposed law
has languished in a City Council committee for more than a year, and its
future is unclear. Massachusetts and Georgia, like New York, have strict
bans against pets like the Savannah, while other states like Illinois
and Arizona have restrictions but do not completely prohibit the animal.
Some states require owners to obtain permits for part-wild pets. Others
require nothing.

"We are one of the stricter states because we are one of the most
densely populated states," said Dr. Thomas French, the assistant
director of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. "Any
time you get a lot of people in close proximity to untrustworthy
animals, it causes conflict. Sometimes the conflict is no more than a
neighbor being frightened, but that is still conflict."

"We don't cater to people's fears," he said, "but we do try to regulate
what we think is a public health threat."

The United States Department of Agriculture is planning a two-day forum
later this month in Kansas City, Mo., to hear how state regulators are
coping with nontraditional pets. The department's Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service is calling the meeting because it believes
that nontraditional pets have created "an entirely new set of
challenges" for federal and state authorities, according to the
invitation for the event.

The first Savannahs were bred in the early 1980's, and named for the
grasslands that are the natural habitat of their ancestor, the African
serval. Female Savannahs cost up to $10,000 because they can reproduce.
The males sell anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000.

None of the authorities contacted could cite any dangerous incidents
involving a Savannah. The same is not true for the African serval. Kim
Haddad, a veterinarian and manager of the Captive Wild Animal Protection
Coalition, a consortium of zoo professionals, sanctuary operators and
animal rights groups in San Carlos, Calif., noted two serval attacks on
children in the last four years.

The popularity of cat breeds rises and falls. The Savannahs are said to
be gaining on the Bengal, a cross between the Asian leopard cat and a
domestic cat, as the country's top exotic cat. "Bengals were the rage
for a long time, but then people wanted something bigger," said Joyce
Sroufe, a cat breeder in Ponca City, Okla., who was a pioneering force
for the Savannahs. "People are really in awe of the way the kitty
behaves, much like a dog."

Savannah owners form an odd sort of community, with most keeping a very
low profile while others are highly vocal about what they consider a
tremendous wrong being inflicted on them simply for loving exotic pets.

Mazi's owner, Ms. LoDolce, is crusading against New York lawmakers,
charging that the exotic pets law is unconstitutional in regard to
Savannah cats. It allows an exception for hybrid pets that are five
generations removed from wild blood. Ms. LoDolce and others argue that
there is no scientific way to test a cat for such a thing, making the
law unenforceable.

The law also allows owners to keep the illegal pets they already have,
if they register the animals with the state. But even that option is
rejected by many Savannah owners as a burden that is intrusive.

"There's a level of paranoia about these cats that's unbelievable," Ms.
LoDolce said.

Another Savannah owner, Ronni Bennett, who lives in Greenwich Village,
said that she does not approve of crossbreeds or wild hybrids, but that
she wanted her cat anyway. "That is one of the contradictions of my
life," she said. " I don't really approve of what I've done, but the
beauty takes my breath away."

That's not the way State Senator Carl L. Marcellino of Syosset, N.Y.,
sees it. Mr. Marcellino, the Senate sponsor of the state's exotic pet
law, objects to the Savannah cat as something alien to the animal universe.

"Breeders are creating animals for commercial purposes that would never
exist in the natural world," he said. "These hybrid species are threats
to the environment and potentially to the families who think they are
buying a family pet and could be purchasing a wild animal."

The Savannah cat has caused a stir about what makes an acceptable pet
even among the largest and best known cat enthusiast groups.

"I'm told they're very loving, but I'm not sure I believe it," said
Carol Barbee, the president of the American Cat Fanciers Association,
which does not recognize the Savannah in its official registry. "We do
not want to support designer breeds for the fad pet market."

Some Savannah owners are fighting for their rights with ammunition from
another group, the International Cat Association, which does recognize
the Savannah as a breed.

"They are the sweetest most gorgeous things you've ever seen," said
Leslie Bowers, the association's business manager. Dr. Carolyn McDaniel,
a consultant with the Cornell Feline Health Center, said that while
Savannahs are popular across the country, she has noticed that they have
become particularly alluring to city dwellers. "It's amazing to me that
apartment dwellers are frequently the owners of these large semiwild
cats," she said.

"I think they're beautiful," Dr. McDaniel added, but "I'll watch them on
the nature channel."