Civet Cat (Musang) in the Attic

There is a civet cat (Malay Musang; Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) that hangs out in our attic now.  He doesn't belong to us exclusively, however, but is shared with the neighbors.  After months of hearing noises up above at night, we had speculated that neighbor cats were somehow getting into the attic.  But one morning, I spied a strange-looking critter out the window, on the fence between our front yard and the neighbor's.  It was unlike anything that I had ever seen, but the words that came to mind were "civet cat".  A quick perusal of our little booklet Malaysian Mammals showed it to be either a Common Palm Civet (Musang pulut) or a Common House Civet (Musang tenggalong).  Although I opened the window to get a photo and ask his/her name, the musang did not stick around long enough for a chit-chat.  He climbed up onto my neighbor's roof quite adeptly.  Since then, my wife and I have seen him going across our front yard right about the same time (7am) as the first sighting.

Since we have no photos yet or our neighborhood musang, I am reduced to links to photos elsewhere on the internet.

Musang are not to be messed with since they are apparently a protected specie in Malaysia (under the Akta Perlindongan Hidupan Liar, 1972) and may have been the vector that carried the SARS virus in southern China a few years back.

They also apparently like chicken.  While contemplating the musang the other day, I realised that I had not seen my neighbor's chickens which used to run around his yard and the street in front.  It had been months since I remember seeing the birds, so common and unobtrusive they were.  But now, in reflection, I realised that they are gone, probably incorporated into civet cat biomass!

In Malay mythology, an evil spirt known as bajang takes the shape of a civet cat (aka polecat).  In an earlier post, I referenced a British author who had mentioned a game played by village children centering around the tree-climbing ability of musang (Winzeler, 1995).


Another interesting item about musang is that there is an expensive coffee (Kopi Luwak), which is made from coffee beans that have been passed through the digestive tract of the musang.  This coffee sells for upwards of US$450 per pound!  Cups of the coffee were first sold for US$33-100 per cup when it was first introduced to the western world!!