Kristine Frank, a woman from Atlanta in the United States woke up to a serval cat in her bed after her husband had gotten up to let their dog out of the house.
Photo credit: Kristine Frank
Frank says she felt movement in her bed and when she looked over, she found an unfamiliar large cat laying next to her, she told WXIA.
‘I look at the cat and I know immediately that is not a normal house cat. It did not look like a pet. It looked like a wild animal,’ she told the local news station.
She described it as being more than 60 cm long with pointy ears and spots and says she had never seen anything like it before since she moved to the area eight years ago. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources has identified the cat as a serval.
She and her husband then shooed the cat out of their house. It was later found again and collected by the Animal Defense Fund, and the owner was found.
Frank said this incident was concerning, as wild animals can be dangerous and she can’t help wonder what would’ve happened if her dog was in the house. ‘If I had small children, what would have happened to them?’
The Animal Legal Defense Fund told WXIA that someone could be keeping the cat, which is native to Africa, as a pet. It is illegal to own a serval in the state of Georgia, and the owner could be pursued by local or state law enforcement.
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