F. tigrina, the Tiger Cat (Little Spotted Cat/Oncilla) can interbreed although most offspring are stillborn and meetings between Tiger Cats and domestic cats normally resulted in the death of the domestic cat due to the Tiger Cat's highly aggressive nature. Paul Leyhausen reported successful matings between a male Oncilla and a female domestic cat. Out of seven kittens born, three were stillborn. However, the Oncilla male was notably aggressive towards female Oncillas and it also killed a domestic female much larger than itself.

Long Island Ocelot Club newsletters of November/December 1964, May/June 1966 and May/June 1968 carried reports of the Oncilla/domestic hybrids bred in Arnhem, The Netherlands by Maria Falkena-Rohrle. The 6-8 lb Oncilla was also known as the "dwarf ocelot". As well as studying oncilla family behaviour, Mme Falken Rohrle was attempting to cross Oncillas with Margays. She had raised the Oncillas alongside domestic Abyssinians in order to make them better housepets. She was mating a female oncilla called Candy to an oncilla male called Milagro. Falkena-Rohrle wrote that Dr Zimmerman in Mt Vernon had been most helpful when Candy was expecting her first litter and again when Iris, an Abyssinian domestic cat, had her litter of oncilla hybrids.

Iris had been calling, but Falkena-Rohrle did not want her to have another litter and kept her separated from the male Abyssinians, but forgot that oncilla stud Milagro might be interested in the much larger domestic cat. She observed Milagro mating with Iris, but was assured the mating would result in nothing but dead kittens if it resulted in anything at all. One authority said that the Oncilla, belonging to the ocelot group had a different number of chromosomes than the domestics and the pair could not breed. When Iris appeared to be pregnant, the owner expected nothing more than a dead kitten and 61 days after the mating she found a dead kitten in Iris's basket, soon followed by another stillborn kitten. Two hours later a live kitten was born and the birth was also witnessed by Mrs Ewer, a well known zoologist from Ghana who was visiting Falkena-Rohrle to to see the cats.

The kitten developed nicely, "not troubling herself about chromosomes and things", and looked more and more like the oncilla sire as she grew. Falkena-Rohrle named her Gloria and she grew up in the care of two Abyssinian mothers whose four male kits were born a few hours before Gloria. It was extremely interesting compare the development of Gloria with Candy's pure-bred oncilla kittens (Victor and Victoria). The two dead hybrid kittens were shipped at the request of Falkena-Rohrle's veterinarian to a friend who is a professor in a Texas university who wished to study the chromosomes of feline hybrids.

According to some reports, Mme Falken-Rohrle was intrigued as to whether the kitten, named "Gloria" was a hybrid or a mutation of the Abyssinian so she deliberately bred an Abyssinian male to an Oncilla female resulting in three more hybrids. It appears from the LIOC newsletters that by 1966, Milagro (oncilla male) and Iris (Abyssinian) had produced three living hybrids which received wide acclaim in European feline fanciers' circles, and abroad in "CATS", a USA magazine as "Glowca, Gloria and Glamour, famed oncilla-abysinnian hybrid trio". Milagro had had to be defanged after killing an older - and larger - female cat, Snoesje, through a bite to the neck.

The Oncilla has two chromosomes fewer (36) than the domestic cats (38), explaining why the Oncilla-Abyssinian hybrids - all female - had all been sterile and possibly why none of the male hybrids had survived. Although the two species were able to produce hybrids, there appears to have been enough mismatch that both sexes were sterile rather than only the males being sterile. The comparable case of the Safari breed (Geoffroys x domestic), with a similar mismatch, results in sterile males and some fertile females.

The Oncilla-Abyssinian hybrids were described by Leyhausen and Falkena as "very beautiful". Their coats had three longitudinal stripes down the back and the rest was patterned with small spots partly arranged into rosettes. The tails were ringed with a number of black hoops. The tail-tip was black.

According to the Long Island Ocelot Club newsletter of September/October 1981, Leyhausen kept a number of oncillas and bred them, comparing their behaviour to that of other small wildcats as well as to domestic cats. Together with a German cat breeder, Maria Falkena-Rohrle, Leyhausen successfully hybridized oncillas with domestic cats.

Leyhausen, P and Falkena M (1966) Breeding the Brazilian ocelot-cat (Leopardus tigrinus) in captivity. International Zoo Yearbook Vol 6; 176-182