The Slice from PBS North.

My name is Kelli Carroll.

I'm a zookeeper here at the Lake Superior Zoo.

And you're not just seeing red.

We're in our nocturnal house with our Pallas Cat, Pabu.

Pallas Cats are a small species of wild carnivores that are found in China and Mongolia.

The thick coat of fur, his tiny little ears, and then that thick tail and those big paws are all cold weather adaptations for him.

His paws are kind of like snowshoes.

H, Pabu, scale.

So all of our animals are either scale trained or in the process of becoming scale trained in order to keep an eye on their weights, because it's the best way for us to be able to see how they're doing.

How are you?

Going to be polite?

Good boy.

They have that grumpy face that a lot of people love.

I love it.

Before I started working with Pabu, the way that I'm working with him now, I was told that he hates people and he is never, ever going to step on a scale.

So it took some doing to change our viewpoint on Pabu and realize maybe that's not actually how he is, and we've just been perceiving him in that way, when that might not be true.

We've come to learn that he's very, very trainable.

So a lot of cats in the wild spend most of their time sleeping.

And when Pabu isn't hunting, which is when we give him his food, he is typically spending his time in his corner where he is now, and he likes to people watch and observe what's going on in his territory.

The Slice from PBS North, presented by the Teberg Fund.