This surprising creature was first spotted back in 1953 during the first successful climb of Everest by Tenzing Norgay, who upon seeing it excitedly shouted out the Tibetan equivalent of “What the f**king f**k is that f**king thing!?!” This led Edmund Hillary to write in his diary that Norgay was not only the most able climber he knew but also the most profane.
The creature had however been mentioned as far back as 800 A.D in the Tibetan Book of the dead, in which the philosopher Padmasambhava writes…
“And there is in the wild and snowy mountains a creature which can suspend itself in mid-air, and what this creature does to my wife’s laundry – don’t even ask.”
Padmasambhava also believed that the cat was the avatar of the 3rd Lama of Tarangtha and that its appearance predicted an especially bad flu season. Stephen Jay Gould, however, had another explanation for the cat’s existence, insisting that it’s ability to levitate was some kind of evolutionary adaptation allowing it to keep its ass from freezing.
Source : “Amazing Animals of Asia” by Professor Hiroshi Hondo, Harvard Press, 2006.