Cats know their names—why it's harder for them than dogs

A Canada lynx sits primly on the shore of Loon Lake in Ontario, Canada in 1906. These 11- to 37-pound (5 to 17 kilogram) cats live in boreal forests across Canada and down into the northern United States.

In a picture taken in 1997, a Lynx gets ready to gobble down a muskrat in Idaho.

Photographer Frans Lanting caught a photo of this caracal with a camera trap in Kavir National Park, Iran, in 2011.

Black-footed cats crouch at their burrow in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, in an image from 2011.

The jaguarundi's stubby ears don't seem very catlike, but its haughty expression will be familiar to many a cat owner.

This Leopardus tigrinus, otherwise known as a little spotted cat or tiger cat, gazes from the bars of a cage after being rescued from poachers in Peru in 2009.

A European wildcat (Felis silvestris) pauses in a grassy field in Moldova in 2009.

The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) is perhaps the most endangered wildcat in the world.

A pampas cat (Leopardus colocolo) peers from behind a tree branch in the Cerrado ecosystem in Brazil, in 2008.

A male fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) triggers a camera trap on a fish farm in Sam Roi Yot, Thailand.

A serval cat (Leptailurus serval) trips a remote camera in Zakouma National Park, Chad, in 2006.

An ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) poses on a tree root in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest in 2004.

An eight-month-old male European lynx (Lynx lynx) steps around a dead roe deer in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland in 2011.

The Leopardus wiedii, or tree ocelot, displays huge eyes as it prowls through a forest in Gamboa, Panama.