This is Toby:
He's a red panda.
I think we can all agree that the author of this article at HoustonPress.com is right when he says:
Holy hell, Toby is cute.
Well put.
Commenter "Alex" wins the thread with his comment:
I believe he prefers to be called Kunte Kinte.
Fuck You Penguin also has a good take on red pandas.
http://fuckyoupenguin.blogspot.com/2008/12/red-panda-trying-to-steal-panda-thunder.html
red pandas are always tricking me into thinking they are raccoons or something similar. Especially the one at the Brooklyn Zoo. Another pleasant picture.
Red Pandas persist in being not-bear not-raccoon not-giant-panda themselves; not very closely related to any of these other clades.
Wikipedia thinks that North America had a close relative of the Red Panda back in the Miocene, on the order of ten million years ago