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Living with a pet server

Some sources seem to indicate that living with a serval is no more challenging than feeding your pet goldfish. At the other end of the spectrum, many sanctuaries and animal rights activists paint serval cats and other exotic cats as unmanageable creatures that no ordinary mortal could successfully deal with. As is often the case, the truth lies in a rational world between the two extremes.

Servals are much more challenging and take a lot longer to raise than a house cat. In order to end up with a docile, secure, and loving servant that can live in your home, you’ll need to spend a lot of time socializing, training, and training him. These things don’t happen automatically with a serval.

There will be problems to overcome. To do so, you’ll need a solid understanding of how animals learn and how to humanely modify their behavior. This is not an animal for an inexperienced pet owner, or even an experienced pet owner who has only had “easy” animals!

A Serval kitten is like a house kitten at speed! If you’ve ever raised a kitten, you know how playful (and sometimes destructive) they are. Then imagine kittens the size of an adult house cat, with much more energy! Prepare to be tackled, bitten, scratched, climbed and playfully wrestled with by a huge kitty, and make sure you have the training experience to teach your little fireball to be kind to humans and your home.

However, if you have the training knowledge and put in the time, you will be rewarded with a wonderful, loving companion who is fun to live with and easy and safe to handle. A well-bred serval is really incredibly sweet and amazing. For me it is worth every part of the time and effort.

Sirocco has an incredibly loud purr, and when he’s feeling cuddly he looks at me with complete adoration written all over his face, he purrs and licks me. When I come home from work, he greets me with purrs and nuzzles on the ankles, and you can tell he’s very attached to me. I have had very affectionate house cats, but Sirocco makes his love known more intensely than any house cat he has ever had. However, he spends much less time overall purring and cuddling than a house cat (that high energy thing). This may change, as I notice that he becomes more affectionate as he gets older. I have to say that he seems very happy as a pet cat. He has a lot of energy and spends a lot of time on the move.

As a result of much early socialization, he is very tame and allows even large groups of people to pet him. However, I have seen it purr only once for a stranger; he seems to reserve real affection for his family.

Living with a serval means having your sandal stolen from under your foot and taken to the compound in the rain at 11:00 pm… Then being forced to go outside to get it without ingesting portions of it.

Sirocco had been playing in his enclosure one night, with no interest in being petted. When I got to bed I found myself sobbing from a harrowing day of work. As I lay there, I felt a soft nose in my ear, followed by a thunderous purr. When I didn’t respond, he gently hit my face over and over again until I greeted him. When I spoke, he licked my cheek and then began to rub his forehead against my face. He continued to lick my tears and “caress” me until I stopped crying. Satisfied that he was okay, he lay down next to me, pressing his body tightly against mine as we drifted off to sleep.

I was sitting on the edge of my bed putting on my socks one morning, after I had finished petting Sirocco… Or so I thought! Coming up behind me, he rested his head on my shoulder and began to purr loudly in my ear, kneading the bed beside me with his paws. Needless to say, I ditched my socks.

Shoes and sandals have been banned in serval-occupied areas of the house since he ate part of one and nearly had to have it surgically removed. In response, Sirocco has developed military powers to detect sandals. Sometimes my mother will be naive enough to come into my room at night to watch a movie using the precious contraband. Relaxing in her chair, she unthinkingly kicks off her sandals as Sirocco remains close to her with feigned indifference. He casually walks by, then grabs the prize in his teeth and darts cheetah-like over the dresser and out the door of his lair, having learned long ago that thieving humans can’t follow him. Even if one of us is lucky enough to cut off his escape route, he won’t give up. Jaws locked, he squints and growls as we make futile attempts to pry, pull, twist, and pry the now tooth-marked sandal out of his grasp.

Pouncing on the faces of sleeping humans and nibbling (to put it nicely) on their toes are also favorite nocturnal activities.

I have a deliciously lazy habit of throwing myself on the bed for dinner. This has a lot to do with the fact that the bed is one of the few comfortable places in the house, and it’s within Sirocco’s domain, so I enjoy his company. One afternoon I forgot to make a serving (tomatoes, cheese, and refried beans) for Sirocco before crashing into a plate of Mexican food. She came up to me and poked her nose into the plate a couple of times. When I blocked him out, he lay down next to me purring, drooling a little, and stretched out his head near my elbow, chin resting on the bed. I relented and shared a couple of tomato wedges. That wasn’t good enough so he got up again only to be blocked by my hand. He did what any sensible servant would do: he stuck out his paw and hit my tortillas!

One night Sirocco had been waking me up with a karate chop every half hour. I finally picked up my rowdy serval and started carrying it to the crate in my living room: the one now reserved for servals who don’t let their humans fall asleep. The problem arose when my mother’s Rottweiler mistook me for an intruder as I stepped out of my bedroom door and snarled out of the darkness. Exit the server. He was out of my arms, over my head, and back in the bedroom before the dog could take two steps. Enter bandages. He had a nice bloody welt on his jaw, and the cut on his neck made people at work ask me the next day what I’d done to provoke Louie the Knife.

Before Sirocco arrived, I had been adamant: no litter boxes in my bedroom. Now, I’m happy when he actually uses the giant box that so gracefully graces my entertainment center floor instead of peeing on my bed.

I came home from work one night to find the blankets dragged from my bed, one of them lying neatly by the entrance to the litter box. As a thoughtful decorative touch, he also removed a German Shepherd figurine from my shelf and placed it in the litter box with one ear sticking out.

I think I’m going to recommend servals to interior designers. They can sell or rent them to clients, on the condition that the designer is called in every time the serval “redecorates” the house. What a way to build repeat business!

One thing I am very proud of is the fact that Sirocco is not very destructive indoors with his claws. For example, he doesn’t scratch the curtains. He simply pulls the curtain rod free of the wall and drags the curtains under the bed. Good service.