Not to be confused with "wild cat" as a general term for non-domesticated felines, or the occasional American use of "wildcat" to mean a lynx, cougar, or bobcat -- this "wildcat" is Felis silvestris (or sylvestris) and is the wild species from which the Sylvestris lybica cattus (common domesticated cat) descends. They are found throughout much of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and there are at least twenty subspecies which inhabit specific locations and have different coat colors and other small differences. Many of the subspecies have interbred with escaped domestic cats, which are most likely the direct descendants of the African wild cat (Felis silvestris libyca), obscuring the original relationships between subspecies. Wildcats are generally slightly bigger than domestic cats, but they are similar enough that wildcat embryos can be implanted in the uterus of a domestic cat and be born normally. A few subspecies:

Felis silvestris silvestris

A scientific name given to European wildcats in general, which vary widely in chosen habitat. Scottish wildcats like the heath and the rocky outcroppings; German wildcats like coniferous forests while those in the Caucasus Mountains prefer broadleaf forests. Their tails are bushier and more blunt-ended than those of domestic cats.

Felis silvestris ornata

The Indian desert cat, which lives in the semi-deserts and steppes of southwestern Asia into India. Asian breeds of domestic cat are thought to have some of this strain in them too. These cats are usually a blotchy light brown to blend in with their surroundings, and have slight ear tufts of hair.

Felis silvestris gordoni

The Arabian desert cat is nearly extinct in the wild due to interbreeding with domestic cats. In 1986, a breeding program was started with a captive-raised male and a wild-caught female in Abu Dhabi and four cats each were sent to programs in Germany and California.

Felis silvestris libyca

The African wild cat, probably first domesticated by Egyptians more than 4000 years ago, still survives in the remoter sub-Saharan parts of Africa, living on small mammals and insects. It usually looks like a pale striped tabby, and villagers still adopt wild kittens to control pests.

A Canadian beer that is very popular among snowboarders due to its low price, high alcohol content (6.1%) and macho image. Tough guys drink Wildcat. The taste is unique, it's good to drink cold, warm it's disgusting.

Another good Canadian beer is Bull Max.

A super-hero created by Bill Finger and Irwin Hasen for DC Comics. Wildcat first appeared in Sensation Comics #1 in January 1942.

Wildcat was the costumed identity of Ted Grant. Grant was a college student until the death of his father left him with no means of finishing his education. Out of school and with no job, Grant happened one night upon a mugging and fought off the muggers. The victim was a boxer named "Socker" Smith who in gratitude offered to teach Grant to Box. Under Smith's tutelage, Grant began a boxing career, being managed by two men named Flint and Skinner. Grant eventually rose to the title of heavyweight champion without ever having lost a fight.

Grant soon found that his managers were on the take and set up a title fight against Grant's former teacher Smith. To ensure that Grant won the fight, the two put a needle in Grant's glove which would inject Smith with a sedative and help Grant win the fight. Unfortunately, though decent boxing managers, Flint and Skinner knew nothing of drug doses and caused Smith to be injected with too much of the sedative killing him. Grant was charged with murder in the case. Flint and Skinner attempted to silence Grant and ran the police car transporting Grant off the road, killing the two policemen and framing Grant for the crime.

Grant wandered the streets for a time, until he was told of the adventures of the Green Lantern by a young boy and how he fought crime. Grant was inspired to create for himself a costumed identity and called himself Wildcat. Creating a costume, he tracked down Flint and Skinner and forced them to confess, clearing his name. He then continued fighting crime as Wildcat. He became a member of the All-Star Squadron for a time and continued adventuring for many years. During the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Grant was struck by a stray bolt of lightning shattering his legs. He was believed to be crippled for life, but eventually recovered.

For a time, a super-powered woman named Yolanda Montez fought under the name Wildcat. She had feline-like powers including claws and heightened agility. She was killed by the villain Eclipso after a short career.

In the oil industry, "wildcat" is a jargon word for an exploratory oil rig that works far ahead of the main fleet. They're the mobile frontier units, which scout into unproven territory looking for new hydrocarbon deposits to tap. It's somewhat of a blanket term, including everything from offshore semi-submersible platforms to desert drilling rigs.

Supposedly, the name itself originated from West Texas drill teams in the 1920s. American wildcats (cougars, that is) happened to be prevalent in the area where they were putting in exploratory wells, and some of the mean kitties that ventured too close to the camp were plugged and hung from the oil derricks.

Even today, some wildcat rigs have actual wild cats (cougars, tigers, etc) painted on their hulls for identification.

Wildcats are typically run by a self-contained gang of workers-- by necessity, since their drilling domain is, by definition, way the hell out in the middle of BFE. Wildcat crews have a reputation for being incredibly tough nuts, working murderous shifts, 12-hours-on/12-hours-off, 7 days a week, often for months at a time. Offshore rigs usually house between 40 and 60 crewmembers. I've read that land-based wildcats have been known to operate with as few as 10 or 20.

(Just for point of reference, the sci-fi movie The Abyss takes place on a fictional wildcat submersible called the Deepcore II.)

The third oldest roller coaster at Cedar Point, built in 1970. It's tiny: less than 2,000 feet long, with lift hills less than 50 feet high. Nevertheless, it's a lot of fun, mostly because the "trains" are tiny, too (so small, in fact, that they cannot be considered trains; each car has space for only 4 riders, and is not linked to any other. Additionally, true to the 1970s, each car is painted as, well, a car. If I remember correctly, there's even a fake steering wheel in the front.)

In roller coasters with long trains, speed is picked up (and gotten rid of) gradually, because when the first car begins to slide down the slope the last car is still on the other side of this hill, chugging upwards. On the Wildcat, speed is gathered quickly, and this more makes up for the relative smallness of the hills.

(Of course, some people can't tolerate the intolerably jarring stop at the end; the excess 15 mph of speed is discarded in about a quarter of a second.)

Verbatim from the Cedar Point website:

Track Length: 1,837 feet
Lift Heights: 50 feet
Over-all Dimensions: 215 feet long, 72 feet wide
Time: Approximately 1 minutes, 25 seconds
Coaches: Seven four-passenger cars
Ride Capacity: Approximately 900 riders per hour

"Wildcat" is a term used by amateur ammunition reloaders to signify some sort of either experimental nature or enhancement that is the result of any number of ammunition manufacturing processes. Typically, wildcatting is only done with brass cartridges and this means it is done with pistol and rifle ammunition and not shotshells. That said, typically a wildcat cartridge is for a rifle and not a pistol. This is not to say that wildcat pistol rounds do not exist as they certainly do. One such example is the .38 Super, which was based on the .38 ACP.

Wildcatting of cartridges is done for any number of reasons. Some people, perhaps defective in character, like to have their name attached to a specific cartridge that is "faster, whiter and brighter"; some people wildcat a cartridge because they believe they can make a better ballistic device and some people like to tinker for its own sake. Whatever the reason, just such a cartridge and person are both called a wildcat or wildcatter, respectively.

At any rate, the reason shotgun shells are not typically developed into wildcats is because shotguns are not usually able to withstand pressures that a rifle or pistol can typically handle; they aren't subject to much room in experimentation as a result. This is not directly due to the materials used; rather, it is both because of the design of the modern day shotgun and the steel used to construct said. Since shotguns are not designed to withstand high chamber pressures, they can explode if the shell goes beyond the pressure (measured in PSI) that it was made to accept (say, 11,500 PSI), or the level of pressure to which the gun is "proofed." The modern rifle and pistol are manufactured to higher pressure tolerances because their ammunition requires higher working pressures (say, 30-50,000 PSI) and their internal designs and materials are selected accordingly.

Wildcat rounds are manufactured from brass that is already commercially available, however archaic the original cartridge may or may not be. Some of the processes used to create a new wildcat include, but are not limited to, flaring out the neck, reducing the angle on the shoulder, increasing the angle of the shoulder, trimming the cartridge to a new size and performing any of the above steps together. Then, there is the ballistic testing and questions to be answered — how accurate, how fast, what is happening to the brass during the firing sequence, are the primers popping out showing too much pressure, do the cases separate? Notes are taken. The whole process can take as long as years and as short as months. It just depends on the steps required to prepare the brass in addition to the field testing that must be performed to gauge success. In the end, a wildcat must change the cartridge in such a way as to give it unique properties unto itself.

Occasionally, the big ammunition manufacturers (Federal, Remington and Winchester) will take note of an excellent wildcat and begin to commercially produce it. One such case is the .22-250 Remington. When this occurs, the round is no longer considered a wildcat.