The name broadly applied to carnivorous mammals constituting the family Felidae, and specifically to the domestic cat, Felis catus. The wild cats: lion, tiger, and leopard are anatomically very similar to each another and constitute the genus Panthera, which also includes the jaguar and the snow leopard. The clouded leopard,  Neofelis, cheetah, Acinonyx, jaguar, Panthera onca, are big cats that do not roar.

The medium-sized and small cats are classified by zoologists in varying numbers of genera, but at present they are all put in the single genus Felis, despite the large variation among them. These cats include the puma (or cougar), the lynx (including the bobcat), the ocelot, the jaguarundi, the serval, also many small species described by the name cat or wildcat, such as the golden cat and European wildcat, as well as the domestic cat.

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