Udaipur has a lake called Fatehsagar with a road around it called Rani Road. The city is surrounded by hills and two big hills called Neemach Mata and Thoria Magra are under the forest department.

On 26^th July 1992 at about 6.30 PM while driving on Rani Road, my daughter Arefa drew my attention to a dead cat lying near the road. I parked my jeep and examined the animal. It was a small cat, probably killed in an accident. The body was swollen; apparently the cat had been killed about 20 hrs earlier. Its coat was grey with a light reddish tinge, with four dark brown stripes running from the forehead to a little beyond the shoulder dorsally.

The flanks and other parts of the body had rusty spots. On the hind quarter the size of the rusty spots was smaller than that on the forelimbs. The tail had no spots or markings. The chin and the underside of the forearms had dark brown stripes. The underside was white with black spots. I consulted “The Book of Indian Animals” by S. H. Prater 1990 and found it to be a rusty spotted cat.

The distribution of Rusty Spotted Cat is known to be in Sri Lanka, Western Ghats and Kashmir. To the best of my knowledge this is the first sighting of a rusty spotted cat from Rajasthan.

Published in Journal of Bombay Natural History Society:

Tehsin, R. H. (1994) Rusty Spotted Cat (Felis rubiginosa Geoffroy) Sighted Near Udaipur. J. Bom. Nat. Hist. Soc. 91(1): 136