European Wildcat
The European wildcat (Felis silvestris) is a sturdy wild cat of the forests of Europe, Turkey and the Caucasus. It is only a little larger than a house cat but looks much bulkier, with a broad, flat head, thick gray brown fur marked with dark wavy stripes, a black line along the spine that stops at the base of the tail, and a bushy tail with three to five black rings and a blunt black tip. Since 2017 it has been treated as a separate species from the African wildcat, which is the true ancestor of the house cat. It hunts mainly at dusk and at night, catching voles and mice in most of Europe and rabbits in Spain and Portugal, and it rarely eats carrion. Each cat lives alone in a home range it marks with scent. Crossbreeding with house cats is the biggest threat to the species, and in Scotland so few pure wildcats remain that the IUCN lists the British population as possibly extinct. Roads, habitat loss and illegal killing also take a toll. The IUCN lists the European wildcat as Least Concern in its 2023 assessment for Europe, published in 2025: it is coming back in Germany, the Netherlands and Czechia but declining in Spain and Portugal.
What is the European wildcat?
The European wildcat (Felis silvestris) is a small wild cat that lives in the forests of Europe, Turkey and the Caucasus. Along with the lynx, it is the only wild cat native to most of the continent. For a long time it was treated as one species together with the African wildcat and the Asiatic wildcat, but in 2017 the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group split them. Today the African wildcat is its own species, Felis lybica, and it is the real ancestor of the house cat, tamed in the Near East about 10,000 years ago. The European wildcat was never domesticated, although it can still breed with house cats, and that is its main problem today. Two subspecies are recognized: Felis silvestris silvestris across Europe and Felis silvestris caucasica in Turkey and the Caucasus. Some populations have stories of their own. In Scotland the wildcat is nicknamed the highland tiger, the wildcats of Sicily carry old genes not found in the rest of Europe, and the wildcats of Crete were only confirmed in 1996, when researchers caught one alive in the Amari valley. In German it is called Wildkatze and in French chat forestier.
Where do European wildcats live?
The IUCN Red List assessment for Europe, made in 2023 and published in 2025, lists the European wildcat as a resident in 28 countries, from Portugal and Spain to Ukraine, Moldova and the European part of Turkey. Beyond that assessment, the Caucasian subspecies lives in the forests of Georgia, Azerbaijan, southern Russia and northern Turkey. The range is patchy rather than continuous. Strong populations live in the low mountains of Germany, eastern France, Belgium and Luxembourg, in the Carpathians and across the Balkans, while in Spain and Portugal large areas that once held wildcats are now empty. The species also lives on two large islands, Sicily and Crete, but the wildcat of Sardinia belongs to a different species, the African wildcat. European wildcats prefer broadleaf and mixed forest with thick undergrowth, next to clearings, meadows, scrub and river banks where rodents are easy to catch. They avoid wide open farmland, built up areas and places where deep snow lies for a long time. The IUCN records them from sea level up to 2,250 meters. In Great Britain the wild population is now listed as possibly extinct, because nearly all the cats left in the Scottish Highlands are hybrids with house cats.
How big is a European wildcat? Size and coat
A European wildcat is only a little larger than a house cat, but it looks much bigger because of its thick fur, broad head and heavy tail. Adults measure about 45 to 65 centimeters from the nose to the base of the tail, and the tail adds another 25 to 35 centimeters. Males weigh about 5 to 8 kilograms and females about 3 to 5 kilograms, and the same cat can gain or lose up to 2.5 kilograms over the year, being heaviest in autumn and lightest at the end of winter. The winter coat is long and dense, which makes the cat look even stockier in the cold months. The fur is gray brown to yellowish gray, with dark wavy stripes on the flanks and legs, four or five dark lines on the neck and a single black stripe along the spine. The ears are set wide apart and the eyes are pale green to yellow. The tail is the best feature to look at: it stays thick all the way down, with three to five clear black rings and a blunt, rounded black tip. Females look like small males, so the two sexes are hard to tell apart in the field.
How to tell a European wildcat from a house cat
Many striped tabby cats look like wildcats at first glance, and even experts often need a genetic test to be sure. Still, a few features help. In a true wildcat the black stripe along the back stops at the base of the tail, while in a tabby it usually continues onto the tail. The wildcat's tail is thick and bushy along its whole length, with broad, well separated black rings and a blunt black tip, while a house cat's tail tapers to a point. The flanks show wavy vertical stripes rather than spots or broken lines, the neck has four or more thick stripes, and there are no white paws or white patches, which are a common sign of domestic ancestry. Wildcats also have a larger skull and a shorter gut than house cats, differences researchers use when they examine dead animals. Behavior helps too: wildcats almost never come close to people, keep away from houses and are rarely seen in daylight where they are disturbed. In Scotland, scientists score cats on seven coat features, and animals that fall in between are treated as possible hybrids until DNA says otherwise. A friendly striped cat near a village is almost always a house cat.
What do European wildcats eat?
Small mammals make up most of the European wildcat's diet almost everywhere. Studies of stomach contents and droppings across Europe show that voles and wood mice are the most common prey, and in many regions rodents make up the bulk of what a wildcat eats all year round. In Spain and Portugal, where wild rabbits are common, rabbits become a main prey, and wildcats are more abundant where rabbits are plentiful. When rodents are scarce, especially in deep winter, the cat turns to birds, young hares, dormice, lizards, frogs, fish and large insects. It eats grass now and then, which helps it bring up fur. Unlike a house cat, a wildcat rarely eats carrion or food left by people and catches almost all of its food itself. It hunts mostly on the ground, walking slowly along forest edges, meadows and field margins, then sits and waits beside a vole run or a burrow. When prey appears it stalks low and close, then rushes the last meter or two and pins the animal with its front paws before a bite to the neck. Because it lives on rodents, a wildcat living near farmland takes many voles and mice from the fields around it.
How do European wildcats live? Territories, mating and kittens
European wildcats are solitary and spend most of the year alone. They are active mainly at dusk and at night, but in quiet places, and in winter when they need more food, they also hunt by day. Each cat has a home range that it marks with urine, droppings left in visible spots and scent from glands on the face and around the tail. Male ranges are larger and usually overlap the ranges of several females. Mating takes place mostly from January to March, when males travel widely and call loudly at night. After about 63 to 68 days the female gives birth, usually in April or May, to a litter of two to four kittens. The den is hidden in a hollow tree, a pile of logs, a rock crevice, an old fox or badger burrow or thick scrub. The kittens are born blind, open their eyes after about ten days, start following their mother at around two months and become independent at about five months, when they leave to find a range of their own. Young females can breed in their first year. In the wild a wildcat lives about 10 years: one cat photographed again and again on Mount Etna in Sicily reached at least that age, the oldest known in the wild. In zoos they live 12 to 16 years.
The Scottish wildcat, or highland tiger
The Scottish wildcat, nicknamed the highland tiger, is the last wildcat population of Great Britain. Wildcats once lived across the island, but persecution and forest clearance wiped them out in England and Wales during the 1800s and left them only in the north of Scotland. There, after a century of crossbreeding with house cats, the wild gene pool almost disappeared. A 2019 genetic review found that the cats left in the wild form a hybrid swarm, a mixed population with almost no pure wildcats, and the IUCN assessment for Europe now lists the wildcat in Great Britain as possibly extinct. Since then the hope rests on Saving Wildcats, a project led by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. It breeds the cats with the least domestic ancestry at the Highland Wildlife Park and releases them in the Cairngorms National Park. The first 19 cats went out in 2023, nine more followed in 2024 and 18 in 2025, for a total of 46, and released females have raised kittens in the wild since 2024. The project also neuters and vaccinates feral cats in the release area so they do not breed with the newcomers. Until a wild population is established again, the United Kingdom is not marked on this species' map.
What threatens the European wildcat?
Crossbreeding with house cats is the biggest problem for the European wildcat. Wildcats and domestic cats produce fertile young, and where feral and free roaming cats are common, the wild genes are slowly diluted generation after generation. Genetic studies show very different levels of mixing across Europe: low in some regions and very high in others, as in Scotland, where almost no pure wildcats are left. House cats can also pass on diseases such as feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency virus. Roads are another major killer. Traffic is one of the most common causes of death recorded in Germany, France and Italy, and young cats looking for a territory of their own are hit most often. Habitat loss and fragmentation hurt the species too, because wildcats need connected forest and avoid crossing wide open fields. In Spain and Portugal, the collapse of wild rabbits after myxomatosis and rabbit hemorrhagic disease took away a key prey. Illegal shooting, snares and poison baits set for foxes still kill wildcats in parts of the range, and hunters sometimes mistake them for feral cats. Forestry that removes old trees and dead wood also takes away the dens where females raise their kittens.
Is the European wildcat endangered? Status and population
The IUCN lists the European wildcat as Least Concern. The latest assessment for Europe was made in February 2023 and published in 2025, and it gives the population trend as unknown, because there is no full count for most of the range. The picture changes a lot from one country to another. Germany holds an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 wildcats, with about 1,000 in the Eifel and the forests next to it, and the species has come back to the Netherlands, Czechia and Austria after decades of absence. In Czechia a family with at least three kittens was filmed in 2025 in the Lusatian Mountains, the first wildcats there in nearly 100 years. Italy moved the species from Near Threatened to Least Concern in its 2022 national Red List. The Iberian Peninsula is going the other way: Portugal has listed the wildcat as Endangered since 2023, and in 2026 the Spanish mammal society SECEM warned that it is Vulnerable in Spain and that wide areas have been left empty. In Great Britain it is possibly extinct in the wild. Across the European Union it is strictly protected under Annex IV of the Habitats Directive, and it is also covered by the Bern Convention and CITES. Green bridges over highways, Germany's wildcat rescue network that plants corridors between forests, and the releases in Scotland are helping.
Where it is found
The European Wildcat can be found in places such as:
