A remarkably elusive Pallas’s cat has chosen an unexpected nursery in the high-altitude village of Hanle in Ladakh. The female entered a local couple’s home through an open window and settled there with three kittens. Farmer Tsering Topgyal and his wife, Palmo, alerted the Forest Department after discovering the wild cat and her young. Rather than disturbing them, the couple reportedly left their house and stayed with relatives elsewhere in the village while the mother raised her kittens. Wildlife photographer Puskar Basu later spent four weeks observing the female from a hide outside the barricaded property. He documented an unusual encounter between one of the Himalayas’ most secretive small cats and a human settlement.
A wild cat moves into a Ladakh couple’s home with 3 kittens
The encounter happened in Hanle, a remote village at about 4,500 metres above sea level. The settlement lies amid a stark Trans-Himalayan landscape of rocky slopes, marshes and snow-fed streams. Despite its harsh appearance, the area supports wolves, foxes, marmots, pikas, raptors and the elusive Pallas’s cat.According to Basu’s account in Discover Wildlife, Tsering and Palmo came face to face with an unusual cat that had entered their home through an open window. Tsering then glimpsed three kittens.The couple contacted the Forest Department, which advised them not to disturb the animals. They gave up the house and stayed with relatives on the other side of the village. A caption in Basu’s article says the house was vacated for two months. The Forest Department also placed a barricade around the property to keep people away.The arrangement gave the female a quiet place to raise her young while still letting her leave the building to hunt.
Why the cat chose the house
The location mattered. The house stood on the edge of Hanle, away from much of the activity in the settlement. Nearby marshland offered voles and pikas, which are important prey for Pallas’s cats.The species normally uses natural shelters and abandoned burrows rather than buildings. The IUCN Cat Specialist Group says Pallas’s cats depend heavily on rock cavities and burrows dug by other animals, including marmots. The Hanle house offered a mother with kittens a protected den close to a productive hunting ground.It was not the first time a Pallas’s cat had used a building near Hanle. A naturalist’s trip report from July 2022 described a female using an abandoned building as a den site. The observers were later told that she had kittens inside.
The “grumpy” face hides a highly adapted predator
Pallas’s cat, Otocolobus manul, is known for its broad face, low-set rounded ears, short legs and dense coat. Those features earned it the nickname “the world’s grumpiest cat”. The name describes its appearance, not its temperament.Its body is adapted to the extreme cold of Central and South Asia. It has a compact, stocky build, and Basu describes its fur as the longest and densest of any cat, which helps it survive the brutal winters.The species ranges from parts of Central Asia through Mongolia and China and into the Himalayan region. In India, confirmed records include Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and, since a 2025 survey reported the first photographic evidence, Arunachal Pradesh.A 2026 study in Oryx documented the first confirmed occurrence of the species in Karakoram Wildlife Sanctuary in northern Ladakh. It relied on DNA analysis of a scat sample collected at 4,424 metres. The researchers also identified pika and Himalayan marmot remains in the sample, which gives some evidence of the cat’s diet in the region.
She left the house every morning to hunt
Basu spent weeks watching the female from outside the barricade. She would leap out of the window early in the morning and spend four to five hours hunting in the surrounding marsh. She returned to her kittens in the afternoon.He saw two main hunting strategies. She would creep towards prey she had spotted, or sit and wait outside a burrow for an animal to emerge. Basu also saw her rattle her tail as a distraction once prey had been startled, which bought her time to pounce.He estimated that she needed five or six rodents a day, and that reaching that quota took 20 to 30 attempts. These observations relate to the one female he followed and are not a measure of the species as a whole. Research from the Himalayan region names pikas, voles and Himalayan marmots as likely key prey.The marshes around Hanle also produced an unusual observation. Pallas’s cats generally live in dry, rocky, open country and have little apparent need to swim. But the marshes here are unusually deep, and Basu watched the female enter the water. He suggested this might be the first documented swimming behaviour in the species.
The kittens leave before the camera can find them
Basu had hoped to photograph the three kittens once they were old enough to venture out. That moment never came. One morning he arrived and found the female gone. He believed she had left the previous night, probably helping the kittens out through the window they had used as their den.The disappearance meant the family could finally return home. Basu searched around Hanle for the kittens but could not find that family again.During his wider search he did find another Pallas’s cat kitten hiding in a rocky den. He watched it from about 30 to 40 metres for two days as it played, explored the rocks and interacted with its mother.
Built for extreme cold
The Pallas’s cat looks bigger than it is. It typically weighs 2.5 to 4.5 kg, but its dense fur exaggerates its size. Basu reports that in winter it adds a layer of fat and dense fur, which can double its weight. Temperatures in parts of its range can fall to around -40°C.Its short legs let it keep a low, crouched profile while hunting. Combined with its muted coat, this makes the cat very hard to spot against rocky terrain.The species is generally found between roughly 3,000 and 5,000 metres. The IUCN Red List assessment notes a scat record at 5,593 metres in the Nepal Himalaya, the highest recorded so far.
A habitat under pressure
The Pallas’s cat has a wide range, but its populations are often sparse and fragmented. The latest global IUCN Red List assessment classifies it as Least Concern, based on the 2019 assessment published in 2020. The IUCN’s first Green Status assessment of the species, published in July 2026, rates it “Indeterminate”, which reflects substantial uncertainty about its population.Habitat degradation and fragmentation, loss of prey, infrastructure development, livestock grazing and disturbance are among the main concerns. The cat’s reliance on burrows and rock shelters also makes it dependent on suitable refuges.Free-ranging dogs are another concern. Basu writes that they hunt Pallas’s cats in packs and are increasing rapidly around Hanle. He also notes that construction in the marshland has reduced that habitat by about half over two decades. He says construction there has now stopped.
Hanle has become an important place for sightings
The Pallas’s cat is rare enough in the Indian Himalayas that individual observations can add meaningful information about its distribution. Researchers have recorded the species around Hanle, Staklung and Lal Pahari in the Changthang region.Sightings have also become more frequent in parts of Ladakh as wildlife tourism has grown. Conservationists quoted by Mongabay say that more visitors, and so more eyes on the landscape, is one likely reason. They also point to prey availability and possibly higher breeding success, though they say the link is uncertain and needs more research.Tsering and Palmo could have reclaimed their home the moment they found the animals. Instead they followed the Forest Department’s advice, stayed elsewhere and let the mother raise her kittens undisturbed. When the cats moved out, Palmo returned home and got back the view from the window that had served as the cat’s entrance and exit.
