Meet The New Mountain Lion Kittens Living It Up Outside Los Angeles

While mountain lion populations in the Los Angeles area are far from thriving in the LA area, the National Park Service recently debuted a new video of five young kittens who might just be the cutest thing you’ll see today.

The kittens are part of two litters found last month by NPS employees in the Santa Susana Mountains, part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area northwest of Los Angeles.

The litters, comprised of three females and two males, probably have the same father: tracking data from earlier this year shows the same adult male fraternizing with their moms. Workers have taken blood samples to confirm the kittens’ paternities.

All kittens were tagged for tracking and will be closely monitored by the parks service.

Rapid urbanization over the past decades has hurt mountain lion populations, though they are only a specially protected species and not an endangered or threatened species. Though strategies are in the works to protect this species, many die from traffic collisions or rat poison.

With this close monitoring, hopefully the kittens will survive, and we’ll be able to watch more cute videos in the future.