VIDEO: Martin Stucki and his wife manage A1 Savannahs, a cattery in Oklahoma that breeds half-wild cats which can cost up to thirty thousand dollars: http://nyr.kr/1447z9A

(Source: newyorker.com)

This week in the magazine, Ariel Levy writes about half-wild cats and the growing trend of crossbreeding domestic cats with their more feral cousins in an effort to create a feline that looks exotic but is tame enough to cohabit with humans. The photographer Mark Peckmezian travelled to Ponca City, Oklahoma, to photograph the A1 Savannahs cattery, whose specialty is a type of cat called the Savannah, known for its leopard-like coat, large ears, and unusual height.  Click here to view a selection of Peckmezian’s pictures from the A1 Savannahs cattery: http://nyr.kr/ZWoAUw

Cartoon by Mick Stevens. For more from this issue: http://nyr.kr/Z7x5WK

Cartoon by Ken Krimstein. For more: http://nyr.kr/14tO0dP

Cartoon by Tom Toro. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/ZqjDNF

Cartoon by Danny Shanahan: http://nyr.kr/SHw3k4

Cartoon by David Spiress. For more: http://nyr.kr/W3ZNHe

Cartoon of the night by Jack Ziegler. For more: http://nyr.kr/QJW54q

Cressida Leyshon discusses the fiction story in this week’s issue, “Breatharians,” with its author, Callan Wink: http://nyr.kr/RucD0b

Winding beneath the magnificent halls of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, with its Da Vincis, diamonds, Greek statuary, Egyptian parchments, enormous number of paintings, mechanical peacock clock, and other treasures, there is a catacomb of cellars. It was into this windowless nether region—far below the Winter Palace’s expansive view of the waters of the Neva—that Maria Haltunen and I had cautiously descended. As I followed her through a narrow, imperfectly-lit corridor, full of large pipes and jutting wires, Haltunen gasped. “Look!” she said.

In the semi-darkness, a little being had appeared. He perched, a foot-tall shadow, on a water pipe.

“Oh, you are a fat one!” said Haltunen, jangling the chain of her I.D. pass like a talisman as she approached the pointy-eared creature. “How nice you are!”

Sally McGrane on the cats of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia: http://nyr.kr/SPKPSU

Photograph by Dmitry Lovetsky/AP.