As you see in the wild, the cat is a superb hunter, one of nature's most perfectly designed predators. Even a well-fed, perfectly contented house cat was created to hunt and will stalk mice and insects; if no live prey is available, it may attack its owner's ankles.

Domestic cats have much in common with their larger relatives. Cats exist in forms large and small across Africa, Asia, and the Americas, sharing similar senses of smell, hearing, and balance.

The name "cheetah" comes from the Hindi "cita," or "spotted." Most cats are patient hunters, waiting to pounce on prey and kill with a single bite to the spinal cord. Not the cheetah, which outruns its prey, then chokes the animal to death. A cat that hunts only by day, the cheetah is also the only species whose claws do not retract, remaining extended to help the fastest land animal on earth run at top speed.

The lion is the most sociable of the cats, living in groups called "prides." Each pride is made up both of lionesses who keep the group together, nurture and teach the young, and lead hunting parties, and one to four males who patrol the group's territory to protect it, staying in touch with contact roars that can be heard up to 5 miles away. Lionesses team up to stalk their prey, and they are capable of killing animals larger than themselves. Creatures of the plains, lions are not very good climbers.

The tiger makes its home in tall grasses throughout Asia, where its striped fur gives it excellent camouflage. A natural swimmer, the tiger, as you can see in NATURE, has many traits in common with the domestic cat, from spraying trees with urine to scratching its claws along tree trunks. While the tiger is the biggest and most powerful of all the cats, it is still no match for humans hunting it for its prized coat, claws, and other body parts. Severely endangered, the tiger's numbers have dwindled to fewer than 6,000 in the wild.