You almost have to feel sorry for the viverrids... they just don't get much respect in the furry fandom, mostly because nobody knows they exist. Even those who do purposefully ignore them, embracing more familiar carnivores like dogs, cats, and bears instead. It just doesn't pay to be a civet or a genet, creatures which will forever be known as Mammals (Other) on FurAffinity.

This fact doesn't thrill Deng the bearcat. Neither a bear nor a cat, he's one of the more eccentric members of this family of prehistoric mammals. However, it bothers him a lot more that viverrids are used to brew civet coffee, a particularly unsavory staple of rich hipster cuisine. The drink is made by first giving a civet large helpings of coffee berries. The berries are digested, but the beans inside come out the other end in the form of a smelly Payday bar. The nutty turd is then washed, cleaned, and ground into a coffee blend said to have a smooth, caramel-like flavor. Yeah, I'll take your word for that.

This could be dismissed as just another example of stupid human excess, like eating poisonous blowfish or treating oneself to a coffee enema. (So it goes back up there...?) However, civet coffee has become so popular that drastic measures have been taken to step up its production. Now civets of all kinds are rounded up, crammed into tiny cages, and force-fed coffee berries in a display of senseless cruelty which, along with the production of foie gras and bear bile, cements our position as number one on the list of the world's douche-iest life forms.

Bearcats are not immune from this treatment, which strikes me as especially tragic. It's senseless for any animal to be put through this hell, but binturongs are intelligent, social creatures that are easily tamed and extremely friendly under the right circumstances. (Being stuck in a cage and having an eternity of painful bowel movements is probably not one of those circumstances.)

So I guess what I'm saying is that you shouldn't drink civet coffee. There are rumors that producers are working on a cruelty-free version of the beverage, with free range civets or something. Still, is this something you absolutely, positively need to consume? Fast food restaurants, bakeries, and food processing giants do everything within their power to make you eat their shit. When you buy this coffee, you're sending them a message that you literally will eat shit.

Enough with the animal rights rant. The critters in the background are:

LEFT: The Congo Water Civet, or Aquatic Genet. These slim creatures look like red pandas on a miracle diet. They're obscenely rare, with a habitat that covers only a small area of the Congo.

RIGHT: The Masked Palm Civet. This guy looks like a head-on collision between a Siamese cat and a European badger, but strangely, the combination works! They're much more common than their cousins in the Congo.