The cubs, which generally weigh about a half-pound at birth, will be hand-raised by zoo staff. In a couple of weeks, the cubs will move into the zoo’s new cub den, where visitors can see them up close and watch staff feed and care for them.

The June and John Mercer Cub Den is a key feature in the zoo’s new $1 million Cats of the Canopy exhibit, which is scheduled to open later this summer. 

“We built the cub den so our visitors could bond with these cubs when they were tiny,” general curator Dr. Karen Goodrowe Beck said. 

The two cubs bring the total number of clouded leopards to eight at Point Defiance Zoo.Clouded leopards live mostly in the forests of Southeast Asia, but massive clear-cutting to make way for the expansion of palm oil plantations has threatened their populations. Exactly how many clouded leopards exist is unknown because the cats are so difficult to study.  With clouded leopards vulnerable to extinction in the wild, zoo staff stress the significance of the cubs to the species as a whole.

“These cats are very rare in zoos and in the wild,” Goodrowe Beck said. “We hope our visitors will fall in love with these cubs and be inspired to help save their wild counterparts.”   Chai Li, a female clouded leopard at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, gave birth to a litter of two cubs Tuesday, June 14.

This is Chai Li’s first litter. She and the cubs’ father, 23-month-old Nah Fun, were born at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand and put together as a future breeding pair when they were five days old.

“There is nothing cuter than clouded leopard cubs,” said staff biologist Andy Goldfarb, who has worked with exotic cats for 25 years. “They appear healthy and are doing well.”