Jungle Cat

Release Date: August 10, 1960

Watch Date: July 6 – July 7, 2023

“Take off on an amazing adventure to Brazil and discover the supreme ruler of the Amazon jungle-the jaguar. Set against a backdrop of stunning waterfalls, breathtaking vistas and exotic flowers, Jungle Cat offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of a jaguar family in life-and-death struggles with crocodiles, wild pigs and strange seven-foot-long burping fish called pirarucu.”

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    And thus ends our True-Life Adventures, and luckily for us, it does not go out with a whimper, like “The African Lion,” but with a roar like, ironically, a lion.

    Now, I’m going to be frank here: I missed the first half of this film. In my defense, our child had norovirus, which we took to be spending too much time in the sun for the first one, but when the second one was sick all over our bed we knew something was up, and then I had to come home halfway through the work day and Bob came home early to take care of me because things were rough. Despite my best attempts to proceed with life as normal, despite twice hourly trips to hug a toilet, I was forced into bed, and he put on the next movie on our list – partly, I think, to keep me still – and I proceeded to doze off for 10 minutes at a time until eventually, Bob declared the whole thing a lost cause and put me to bed.

    Still, I had seen this movie before, so it’s not like I was totally confused when we picked it up halfway through the next day when I could finally keep down tea and gingerale. Besides, it’s cute animals. It’s not like there’s a complicated plot to follow.

    The animals are exceedingly cute. I love sloths, and anteaters and monkeys are adorable. The jungle has too many giant snakes, but Bob inexplicably loves those; though I suppose there is no accounting for taste. And obviously, the jaguars. I am a cat lover. I am a panther lover. This is a good film if you’re a big cat fan.

    Oh, and let’s talk about panthers for a second. Because all jaguars and leopards are part of the genus panther. So, while panther has become a slang term for the all black furred version of both of these species, they are both panthers and panther as a species doesn’t exist. So there’s a fun fact for you. If you call a black jaguar or a black leopard a panther, you’re right, but you’d be just as right if you called the spotted versions a panther, too.

    I think this film does a great job of keeping ones interest while being adequately informative on the animals being featured. There’s no long scenes of bubbling mud set to music, no forest fire, nothing done for purely entertainment sake, but this film somehow serves to be more entertaining than every other True-Life Adventure. Maybe it’s because it feels more like a traditional documentary, and I don’t know if that means that traditional documentaries are better than True-Life Adventures, or if that means I’m just more conditioned to like traditional documentaries because that’s what I’ve grown up with. I’m not going to miss scorpion hoedowns, that’s all I can really say about that.

    If you’re only going to ever watch one True-Life Adventure, this would probably be the one I’d recommend. I know they’ve won Oscars for other True-Life Adventure shorts, but those are not currently on Disney+, so if there’s better ones out there, I remain blissfully unaware.