She's a human's animal! She's exactly like our cats or dogs — she's meant to be with people. She thinks she's supposed to live together with a person. Up until now, she's been living indoors with us, and still does. Sometimes she sleeps on the couch, cuddled up, in bed. The only issue is that when she sleeps in the bed and suddenly gets affectionate in the middle of the night, and then licks your face with that rough tongue of hers — well, that's brutal, like someone scraping your face with sandpaper. So to avoid that, we don't let her into bed anymore. But hostile? No, absolutely not.

That sound she's making — no, that's not a growl, that's her purring. The puma is actually the only big cat that can purr," said Risto Ränk, who runs a zoo in Saaremaa.

Her name is Zuumi. And this footage here is now definitive proof that the animal with the white muzzle and the milk-stained look is, indeed, a puma. And most likely, she's the only one of her kind in Estonia. Zuumi is about a year old and comes from several generations of pumas bred as pets. And although Zuumi lives on the grounds of the Saaremaa Zoo, where she has her own house and enclosure, due to bureaucratic red tape, she still can't be shown to zoo visitors. But she receives plenty of attention and care from her owner.

"I go to see her — or she comes inside — every single day. That's never in question. If it's a super busy day and I haven't had time for her by evening, she just calls out across the yard like, 'Hey! You haven't come today — it's time!' So I go, and she's happy. She has different kinds of vocalizations, but I always know exactly when she's calling for me!" said Ränk.

"When she was small, you had to set boundaries. That's how it is with any animal. And the only way to make her understand that she bit too hard is — you bite back! Animals speak a different language, so yes, you bite back. And you also have to understand that a large predator has a much higher pain threshold than we do. So you have to bite her a lot harder than you'd bite a person!" Ränk explained.

Ränk could probably talk forever about Zuumi's life and habits.

"Regular house cats didn't interest her much. Let's be honest — too small and kind of pointless! She actually prefers dogs, because dogs are great to run and play with," Ränk said.

Could Zuumi possibly have a fellow puma roaming the forests of southeastern Estonia?

"There's been no real proof that such an animal is in our forests, and I don't believe there is one either. It's very hard to confuse a puma with any other animal. A lynx, though? Lynxes are much smaller, their body language is totally different and they don't have long tails. All the video clips we've seen have clearly shown lynxes — there are quite a few of them in Estonia," said Ränk.

"At the moment, since we have no clear evidence that a puma is living in the wild in Estonia, we don't see any need to intervene," said Karmel Ritson, chief specialist for animal assistance at the Environmental Board.

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