Catalogue of specimens of Felidae family (Mammalia, Carnivora) specimens deposited in the State Museum of Natural History NASU, Lviv, Ukraine

Currently, modern cats (Felidae) are divided into 8 lineages (phylogenetic lines), which include 14 genera and approximately 40 modern species (Загороднюк та ін., 2022). The cat collection of the State Museum of Natural History NASU, like all vertebrate collections, has a regional character, therefore it is represented by only two species: European wildcat – Felis silvestris Schreber, 1775 and Eurasian lynx – Lynx lynx (Linnaeus, 1758). The collection has been filled since the foundation of the Didushytskyi Museum, the heir of which is a modern museum, that is, from the middle of the 19th century. According to the method of making, the collection consists of stuffed animals (25), skulls (10) and skins (2). It consists of 37 samples (20 of European wildcat and 17 Eurasian lynx). Earlier in the collection there were 13 more samples, which were lost for various reasons or transferred to other collections (5 stuffed Eurasian lynx and European wildcat, and 3 skulls of Eurasian lynx). In the archive of the Museum preserved acts of transfer of exhibits to the Institute of Zoology NASU and Kyiv zoological museum and Uzhhorod University, where among others there are Felidae, however, we failed to find these samples in the mentioned museums. One Eurasian lynx was transferred to the museum of Grodno city (Belarus) in 1924. The oldest exhibit is Eurasian lynx skull, dated of 1857, the youngest – European wildcat skin dated of 2013. The main number of samples, almost 40%, collected from 1880 to 1889. The largest number of exhibits (4) arrived during 1880. All samples collected in the Carpathians and Ciscarpathians (14 – Lvivska oblast, 11 – Ivano-Frankivska oblast, 1 – Ternopilska oblast of Ukraine and 3 – form South-Eastern Poland) and one Eurasian lynx collected in Polissia region. The main ways of income – gifts to the founder of the museum Volodymyr Didushytskyi from his friends and acquaintances, some samples were purchased. Three samples (stuffed Eurasian lynx, stuffed animal and two skulls of a European wildcat) came from the Natural History Museum (disbanded in 1940) of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv. Scientific analysis of the State Museum of Natural History NASU cat collection was not carried out, indirectly the collection is mentioned in the guidebooks by the museum (Dzieduszycki, 1895; Guidebook, 1957; State, 1982) and K.A. Tatarynov monograph (Татаринов, 1973).