About the Museum of Hoaxes
The Museum of Hoaxes is dedicated to promoting knowledge about hoaxes. (Click here for opening hours, etc.) On our blog we post about whatever dubious-sounding claims come across our path on a day-by-day basis. In our archives we have hundreds of articles about the most fascinating and notorious deceptions throughout history, from the middle ages to the present.
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The Ashera Cat
Status: Real
Want to own a leopard? That probably wouldn't be legal, but for $22,000 you can have the next best thing. A company called Lifestyle Pets is selling what it claims is a cross between an African Serval, an Asian Leopard Cat and a domestic cat. So it's like a smaller, tamer version of a leopard. They call this cat an Ashera. Their product page says, "Fully socialized, the Ashera gets along well with children and other pets and unusually for cats, the Ashera takes well to being walked on a leash."At first when I saw the Lifestyle Pets website, I thought it was some kind of elaborate hoax in the vein of GenPets. But the Ashera seems to be real. At least, it's being widely reported in the news. And these cats look big! (Well, big for cats.) I don't think any other cats in the neighborhood would mess with them. Not many dogs would either, I would bet. It would look pretty cool walking one of these cats around the neighborhood, but for $22,000 they're a bit out of my price range.