Pallas’s Cat is a small wild cat named after the naturalist Peter Simon Pallas, who first described the species in 1776. In 2002, the IUCN classified Pallas’s cat as near threatened because of the broad but patchy distribution in the grasslands and montane steppe of Central Asia. Pallas’s cats inhabit the Asian steppes between heights of 1,000 and 4,000 metres (3,300 and 13,000 ft). It is found along the eastern and southern coasts of the Caspian Sea, through northern Iran, India, and Pakistan, in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, western and central China, and Mongolia.