For about ten years I raised African caracals. Beautiful cats; adult males weighed about 40 lbs.
Carnivores are usually very cute as babies and tolerable as adolescents. When they reach sexual maturity they become completely unpredictable and moody. 'Moody' sometimes translates into violent and possessive. They can fixate on their human keepers to an unhealthy degree. I had my body opened up by the claws and fangs of a relatively small wildcat enough times that I swore off exotics forever.
I can't imagine having a cat large enough to easily kill a person if he wakes up in a foul mood. Keeping large carnivores as pets almost never ends well for the animal or the owner. Not trying to rain on your parade. I'm offering advice I learned the hard way.
Couldn't have said it better myself, first of all caracals are fantastic cats and can become very tame. Second as I mentioned, an animal like that that was raised by humans becomes fearless and in a fight always (I'll say it again,
ALWAYS!!!) wins. You can never play any sort of game that involves wrestling or play fighting, feeding always has to be a routine so they never develop hunting skills, and they can never be around small or even teenage children. My cats attitude would change the second they saw someone they didn't know and if it was a younger or petite person it was sort of scary the difference in body posture and attitude that happened.
While I am not of the opinion that keeping wild animals is wrong or something people should not do, I am of the very strong opinion that only certain people should do it, I don't know you so I can't say this is for you but just from the questions and posts you have put I don't see this ending well at this point. I am not trying to sound mean or uppity (is that a word?) but the tone of the posts and questions seems too casual for the commitment that is needed to do something like this. Again, I don't know you so maybe I am wrong, it is just my feeling from reading your initial post, you are thinking about this in the wrong way, you should not be thinking about getting one of these as a pet but instead think about the 12 to 18 year commitment you are going to make and the changes to your lifestyle you will have to make, not to mention the money involved in the caging, property improvements and care the animal will need for the next 12 plus years of your life. If you have to think about that for more than a minute or two it is not something you should consider further because once you have him or her in your care there is no easy way to go back.
It is not like anything you have ever experienced, once you get a cat like this you can never take a vacation or a day off, you can never let anyone on the property without supervision, you have to change the whole property to prevent the escape of the animal or others from just wandering on the property, there are a whole set of lifestyle changes you will have to commit to once this animal becomes an adult. If you have to leave for even a 3 day weekend who will care for the cat? You can't just have a neighbor come over and feed it, you can't let anyone get near the pen, if he grabs an arm or leg through the caging it could be fatal, if you are lucky it maybe just an amputation or in the mildest of accidents a serious laceration that will need stitches. These are things to consider if you commit to something like this.
