Bored with normal cats, the Russian couple decided to keep a mountain lion in the house as a pet

Aleksandr and Maria Dmitriev, a young Russian couple, have been sharing their home with a mountain lion for the past three years.
Cats have always been among the most popular pets in the world, but the cat the couple Aleksandr and Maria Dmitriev keep in their one-bedroom apartment is a little different from the other. Their “cat” Messi is a 3-year-old leopard, the second largest predator in America, after leopards.

In the wild, the lion leopard is also considered the top predator. However, Messi was born in the zoo and most of the time it lived as a domestic cat, so for the couple, Aleksandr and Maria, they see Messi as a big domestic cat. Although Dmitriev is well aware of Messi as a predator, at a certain point it will “test” their power to see who has control in the house, but both husband and wife have done. the need to restrain Messi’s wild nature. Aleksander and Maria are both well-trained psychologists, they have always loved cats, but never thought of sharing their home with a mountain lion. The cat Sphynx Kira was already enough for them. However, in 2018, when they heard that a leopard at the local zoo was in need of medical attention, the two decided to adopt it. They believe that in the zoo, the animals will have to live in small barns, leaving tourists to visit, so they want to give Messi a better chance of living. The young couple knew that if he didn’t rescue Messi, it might die, but they also knew that the zoo wouldn’t easily hand the young lion over to them. So they decided to pay for Messi and were very surprised when the zoo agreed to sell. The couple brought Messi home to take care of his health, and they also had to renovate and adjust around the house to prepare for raising a lion. Most of the time Messi works like a domestic cat. However, its oversized size does have some disadvantages to it. Alekskandr and Maria have repaired the hallway to a residence for Messi, lined the walls with bamboo panels to withstand the lion’s scratch and convenient if it has to be replaced. They also erected a large trunk for Messi to climb, adding a small hiding place for it below. But it seems that Messi prefers to sit in front of the bathroom window, where he can see the endless grassland outside the apartment complex. To get along with Messi, Aleksandr and Maria sent him to pet training. The results are impressive as now Messi can hear a simple fate like “sit”, “stay”, “come” and “no”, even take him for a walk. Training was important to Messi, but it didn’t have a lot of space in the Dmitriev couple’s apartment, and they couldn’t drop it in the park near the house either. So it was trained to go for walks with the owner. So the locals are no longer too strange to see a man walking a large mountain lion. According to the couple, the experience of raising Messi is incredibly positive. For one thing, they find that living with this big cat also presents certain difficulties. The whole haid can’t go on vacation or hang out with friends. The cost of living meat to feed Messi is also up to 600 dollars a month. Aleksandr and Maria are both aiming to make money to move to a more spacious house, giving Messi some private space. If they achieve this goal, they will then adopt another big cat, possibly a leopard for Messi to have friends. Through the newly updated photos on their personal page, it seems that they have achieved their aspirations. The couple moved to a new home and Messi also has a friend who is a leopard. Currently, Messi has become a phenomenon on social networks, the Instagram account of the family has 1.5 million followers, while YouTube is 1.8 million.