> Wolves, coyotes, jackals, and domestic dogs are at least arguably the
> same species (in that they interbreed.).
What? Sorry, but no. None of these, with the possible exception of the wolf, can have fertile offspring with an ordinary dog. The wolf is a disputed case, some say that dogs _can_ have fertile offspring with them.
You could argue that there are large differences in size within some species separeted by geography. But this does not seem to be the case with shadow cats.
Besides, none of these are as small as a housecat. The variation in size, excepting some (human controlled) breeds of dog, is not "from housecat to jaguar" (RQ2). This was probably a consequence of the fact that somebody gave them a SIZ of 1D6. A sort of reverse way of describing a creature, first we give it the numerical statistics, _then_ we describe it. Hopefully this is a thing of the past. In HW:NB the only thing stated is that "the largest alynxes are about the size of a large dog", which is much better.
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Henrix
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