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It's the beginning of MONSTER MONTH! This episode's not very spooky unless you're outside at night and hear a terrifying scream! To be fair, that would be spooky even if you don't know anything about the wampus cat.

THE KICKSTARTER GOES LIVE IN JUST TWO DAYS!!

Further watching:

The Growling, Ferocious, Diurnal Kitty Cat: The Jaguarundi

Further reading:

My original article about the wampus cat will appear in Flying Snake #21. You can order it and back issues here and here.

The cougar:



A jaguar with her black jaguar cub (picture by Alma Leaper):



The jaguarundi looks kind of like an otter:



Jaguarundis come in different solid colors, including black or nearly black:



Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
It’s October at last! Yes, that best of all months, MONSTER MONTH!
This episode started out as an article I wrote for the magazine Flying Snake, which is an awesome little magazine that you might like. I’ll put a link in the show notes if you want to order a copy.
Also, in only TWO DAYS we’re kicking off our Kickstarter to fund the Strange Animals Podcast book! It’s done and now I just need to pay the people who are going to make the cover and do the interior design to make it look great! The Kickstarter will go live on Wednesday, October 6, 2021 and will run through Friday, November 5, 2021, which gives you lots of time to decide if you want to back the project. On Wednesday I’ll be releasing a bonus episode to remind you that the Kickstarter has begun, explain exactly how Kickstarter works in case you’re not sure, and share a chapter from the audio version of the book about a mystery animal we’ve never covered before. If you want to look at the Kickstarter page now, though, there’s a link in the show notes so you can look at it and even set it so that Kickstarter will send you an email when the campaign starts. There’s an early-bird special that will only be available on the first day of the campaign, just saying.
But right now, let’s kickstart monster month with an episode about the wampus cat! The wampus cat, or just wampus, has appeared in folklore throughout North America for over a hundred years and probably much longer, especially in mountainous areas in the eastern portion of the continent.
The term actually comes from the word catawampus, probably related to the phrase catty corner. Both words mean “something that’s askew or turned diagonally,” but catawampus was also once used in the southeastern United States to describe any strange creature lurking in the forest. It was a short step from catawampus to wampus cat, possibly also influenced by the word catamount, used for the cougar and other large cats native to North America.
Whatever the origins of the word, the wampus cat was usually considered to be a real animal. Some people probably used the term as a synonym for catamount, but many people firmly believed the wampus was a different animal from the cougar, bobcat, or lynx. It was usually supposed to be a type of big cat, although not necessarily.
The word wampus also once referred to a dress-like garment resembling a knee-length smock worn over leggings, also called a wampus coat. The first newspaper use of wampus referring to an animal doesn’t appear until the very end of the 19th century. A Missouri paper wrote in May 1899:
They knew immediately the source of the hair-raising scream. The “wampus” was after them. They could see it; it was a big black thing with long hair and large feet.
What may be a follow-up to that story, from a different Missouri newspaper, appeared in November 1899 and was headlined “THE WAMPUS IS DEAD.”
Many described it as gray wolf, but others refused to believe such an animal was here and lightly spoke of the wampus. It frequented the dark woods at day time, coming forth at night and roaming around,