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Ancestor: Beach Cat

Size: Up to 1.5 m tail included, 1.2 m nose to hindquarters.

Dietary Needs: Mixed terrestrial and sea prey. Opportunistically takes whatever it can get, if the land is deficient due to drought and resulting famine they hunt in the sea. If the sea is deficient or toxic from algal blooms, they go deeper inland. They will often take kills from smaller cats, which is effective as the smaller cats have learned over generations that barrel cats will eat other cats.

Life Cycle: Unusual for cats, they are typically monogamous, with the father sticking around to protect the kittens of his single mate. Rarely he might manage to spread his energy across a few mates, but this is exhaustive of his time as well as energy as females are generally intolerant of each other. Just because they share the same mate doesn't mean they're on the same team, and thus they will live in separate, competing territories. 

Due to a heavy reliance on the sea for food the parents need to leave their kittens for more time and for greater distances, without being able to hear their fragile mews due to the noise of the water.  The population of barrel cats is also more concentrated around the coast, meaning the kittens need a bodyguard. This makes having two parents watching in alternation an advantage. The sea provides a lot of food, even in areas of low productivity. There are a few species of barrel cat that aren't as heavily reliant on the sea to hunt because they live in climate zones that are more productive, and such cats are less often monogamous as the male becomes more often competition for food rather than a protector.

When the kittens are moving on to solid food and the parents take turns to hunt, the parents consume large volumes of squid, fish and prawns to the point of stretching their stomachs. They won't digest their food very efficiently this way, but need to offload some of it when they return to land to complete digestion. The extra is offloaded onto the ground for their kittens to eat. Since it's softened by the stomach acid and enzymes it helps the kittens get used to solids more gently than introducing fresh, undigested solid food. Small amounts of intestinal contents are ejected along with the stomach contents, which boosts the kitten's intestinal microflora, strengthening their immunity to various diseases in the seafood.

There is rarely more than three kittens in coastal-living cats, and two are common. So much parental investment goes into their care that there is a high chance that at least one in two will survive to independence. Less derived and more inland living barrel cats tend to produce larger litters, usually between three and five.

Other: Amphibious owing to their long, cylindrical body with a longer ribcage section, much larger lungs, better streamlining and greater weight. Although they look well suited for land travel and hunting, in water they glide with little effort after aquatic prey such as prawns, squid and fish. This makes them capable of spreading their population quicker than other species to other terrestrial habitats across the channel dividing East and West Catland. While narrow compared to the breadth of the oceans, the channel is still a feat for a terrestrial animal to swim across. For this cat here are frequent events of genetic mixing between populations on the East continent and West continent, while other terrestrial animals might only survive the crossing on very few rare occasions over the course of the species' existence.

More so than their last known ancestor and similarly to mergs they have unusually stiff tails for cats. It assists with turning and to a very small extent propulsion also. Aquatic propulsion is mostly controlled by an even distribution of foreleg and hindleg power, the tail only contributing slightly.

Also more so than their ancestor (and also convergent with the mergs) is that they can prevent entry of water into their nostrils. Barrel cats do this in an opposing way from mergs. The muscle is by default relaxed (and pulled slightly upwards by attachments to the middle of the nose) which and pushed up by the upper lip, which is swollen with fatty support (and good vibration conduction) for the sensitive nerve bundles that detect vibrations in the water and to an extent on land also. To open, they nostrils tense. The energy expense to keep them clearly open is small, but if fatigued after a hunt or in hot weather the cats may resort to panting through their mouths much more often. This panting helps them cool much more rapidly than nose breathing so the cat can more quickly overcome it's fatigue.

They have thick tough whiskers of various sizes to direct vibrations of various frequencies to the sensitive nerve bundles mentioned above. This allows them to respond especially quickly to the passing of prey close to their heads that they might not see while in the water. They can also detect the pulsing jet propulsion of squid this way and determine their size long before the squid is close enough to be a danger. Barrel cats eat squid small enough for them to catch, but there are some very large squid that can eat the cats. Like mergs, barrel cats can rasp apart squid tissue with enlarged tongue papillae, so that the tentacles don't present a choking hazard.