The rarest big cat in the world needs a normal moggy as her foster mum

She is the offspring of an eight year old ligress called Zita - whose father was an Africa lion and mother a Bengal tigress - and a lion, named Samson, also from Africa. Officially she is called 'hybrid' which somehow doesn't do justice to her beauty. Some say she is a 'liliger' but, being female, that surely makes her a 'liligress'?

Are there any animal experts out there who know the answer?

Keepers at Novosibirsk Zoo in Siberia say that because Zita's milk failed soon after giving birth they had to rescue the cub in order to save her. 

And this is where domestic tabby cat Dasha stepped in. 

'Kiara is now with a two year old cat called Dasha,' said Roza Solovyeva, Head of the Cats Section of Novosibirsk Zoo.

'Dasha belongs to one of our zoo-keepers, but lives on the Zoo's territory, so she is familiar to the smells and sounds of it. 

'She has recently had a kitten, and very soon after Kiara was born, Dasha accepted her. 

She added:  'The mother cat is playing with Kiara, keeps her warm and washes her like her own.'

Sadly, it will now be impossible to let her back to her mother Zita who would no longer recognise her smell. 

'You can't imagine this happening in the wild, that a kitten smelling differently, raised by another female, can be accepted back by its predator mother,' said Roza Solovyeva. 

Kiara - named after Simba's cub in The Lion King, the Walt Disney Feature Animation - could not have been conceived in the wild. There are a number of cases of ligers and ligresses in the world but experts say it is impossible for males to conceive and exceptionally rare for females to give birth. 

'There is one definition we are using to describe her now, which is a hybrid between a lion and ligress. I myself do not like to use this definition when describing Kiara, but I've got no knowledge of what the other name can be for her,' she said. 

'Some called her a liligress, but I don't know if there is actually a name like that. We've still to check if there are any other hybrids of lion and ligress alive in the world, or have there been in the past - and if so, what they are called.'

The keepers were not surprised that Zita and Samson got together, but had been shocked earlier by Zita's parents producing a cub.

The deputy director of Novosibirsk Zoo, Olga Shilo, said: 'Zita's parents have known each other since their early days, when they were quite young. The keepers saw that they overcame any natural enmity but we had no idea they would, or even could, mate. Everyone was more than a little surprised when a flame of passion consumed these two very different childhood friends.'