I know, I know, I am late again but less about me I want to know who decided that July was to be the month that every large carnivore [and one small one] in Christendom would walk into a box trap?

It started on the 2^nd with another of the leopard’s resident in the new rehab area walking into a box trap and needing a radio collar, all went well and she was left in the trap to wake up and for subsequent release. Later that day I needed to move one of our welfare cheetahs, Twiggy, to make room for a younger cheetah, Rascal. I will let you guess how he got his name.

The 3^rd saw me on the way to Omitara to pick up a male cheetah, just down the road for me but still an all day trip. The 4^th was releasing the cheetah first thing and then off to just outside of Windhoek to pick up a female leopard. This cat was caught on a small holding just 10 kilometres from the city centre, leopards are very adaptable animals and in some instances in South Africa are seen in built up areas surviving by scavenging and catching the occasional dog. The 5^th saw me releasing the leopard in the morning, moving rascal to Twiggy’s old camp and doing a bit in the workshop. That evening I had a call to go and pick up another leopard in Otavi so I was prepared to leave at 0800 next day, no such luck. I had a radio call to say that two more leopards in the rehab area had been caught and I needed to radio collar them, a quick call to the farmer to give him a new arrival time and then off to the traps.

Radio collaring leopards is somewhat of an art form, there is no ”oh that will do”. Because a leopard has such a muscular neck it is almost the same size as it’s head, if I can get the collar over one ear by pulling it [very hard] then the leopard will definitely get it off. On the other hand it cannot be too tight. Once you have the animal down you do not want to get it wrong because you will probably not get another chance, leopards are very intelligent they will not walk into a box trap again for a long time, you can try all the tricks in the book [which was written by a leopard by the way] and still not get it. As an example TJ, our big resident male leopard in the 4,000 hectare camp, dropped his collar in April of this year. Obviously with no collar we cannot track to find and re dart him, he will not go near a box trap so I am on standby to go at a moments notice to dart him whenever he is seen. He has been seen a lot but is very rarely in a good position to get a shot, the last time even though he had a clear spot to walk to a kill he came in from behind through the thick bushes. Needless to say he is still “at large”.

The collaring went well but took a while so I did not leave for the farm until early afternoon. This cat was a large angry male, I am not sure if he was the culprit that was killing the calves though but the farmer, who has called us before, does not want to shot the animals even though he had lost a lot of calves. As I left he re set the trap and told me he would call again if he caught more. Tuesday the 7^th was a bit more sedate as I only had to dart Pixie, our old male Caracal, he was staggering a bit on his rear legs and I needed to take him to the vets. The 8^th was surprisingly quiet, I could catch up on some of the blood work and paper work that picking up cats creates, you lot thought I just drive around the country picking up and dropping off cats didn’t you? Afraid not!

Who told you to relax Houghton? Yep another call, two leopards from the same farm in Otavi. The car knows this trip off by heart so I did not have to do much, the cats were Mother and a 3 month old cub both in excellent condition. All went smoothly and they were taken back to Africat to recover and released next morning. Then the next day a call from a farmer 50 kms away to say that they had a caracal in a box trap that had a collar on and could it be ours? We certainly had not been able to find one of our radio collared caracals for a few weeks inside the 4,000 hectare camp but were thinking that the collar had failed. So off I went and low and behold there was our Caracal as cool as cool can be. He is now back in the rehab camp and as yet has not felt the need for another 50 kilometre jaunt.

After a nine day break from picking up cats I had a call from my old friend in Otavi who had another leopard, this one was rescued and released by the book only this time I did not have to go, the car went on its own!!! 

Two days later we had a call from a farmer that had three cheetah cubs that they estimated to be 6 months old, they had shot the Mother without realizing she had cubs and had been trying to get a permit to keep them for two months but the application had been turned down. The Ministry of Environment and Tourism are trying their hardest to stop large carnivores from being kept in captivity; it is even illegal for us to keep a healthy, wild caught large carnivore unless it is injured or orphaned. 

This phone call now set in motion a huge ripple effect. The cubs would have to be in a fairly small camp and would need and overhang because cubs climb, we had a small camp that would do the job but the overhang would have to be built and there were two young cheetahs, Peanut and Starbuck, already in there that were due to go into a larger camp. The only available camp of the right size to move them to had 5 young cheetahs in that needed a larger camp anyway so I could move that 5 and then put Peanut and Starbuck in there. But the only camp the right size for the 5 to move to had 7 cheetahs in, what the hell, I had nothing else better to do right? 

I phoned the farmer and gave him an estimate of the time I would probably be ready to visit him to get the cubs, that was fine as they were happy where they were and had already been there for two months anyway. Not wanting to have a million cheetahs all asleep at the same time I darted them in groups of 3 starting with the 7. Three in the morning and then 3 more in the afternoon, so on and so forth until I eventually got to the end of the great exodus then the building of the overhang could start. This took a further 4 days so I left early on the 4^th day knowing that the cubs would have to remain in the transport crates until the next morning when everything should be ready for them. Because of their two month stint in captivity the cubs were fairly used to people, I actually estimated them to be a little younger at 5 months, and the darting went really well. With cubs we do not do measurements as they grow so fast, if at some stage in their adult life they have to be darted again we will do them then. So I just took blood samples and put in a transponder [similar to the one that goes in the neck of your dog], Ioaded them onto the car and headed home. 

They went into their new camp the next morning and have settled down really well, even to the extent of coming for food when called. 

It is now the 28^th July, surely it is all over for this month? Oh go on then just one more! A leopard in the Khomas Hochland but luckily this farm had an airstrip so I could go with the plane. Fueled up and left at 0600 on the 31^st, having been given GPS coordinates over the phone I was, of course, hoping they were right. They were but what they failed to tell me was that it was a 600metre scrape on the side of a mountain at 30 degrees. Luckily I had seen Air America where Mel Gibson had plonked a plane onto a mountain strip very similar to this one so I just did the same thing, a bit hairy but it worked! Take off was more sedate and the trip back was very pleasant, this leopard, a 3 and a half year old female was released on the 1^st of August and so ended a rather busy month. 

After a hectic July it was good to see that the 1^st was uneventful. August started on the 2^nd with a surprising radio call from Mush, the guy busy trying to catch all the predators in the area that will encompass the 16,000 hectare rehab camp before we finish the fencing. He had caught a spotted Hyaena in one of the box traps, although we did have a couple of visits from wild Hyaena when we had Rupert, Paddington and Pooh in captivity they are a fairly rare sight in this area. 

This one turned out to be a 3 year old [approx] male, he was extremely calm considering he was a wild animal and went down under the anesthetic very fast. His collaring caused no problems and he was left in the trap to recover and then released later that night. He has since been tracked on many occasions and seems to be staying in the same area, possibly attracted to the calls of our three in the 4,000 hectare camp.

 A call from a farmers wife in Omaruru on the night of the 5^th started Carla and I rushing around looking for the baby bottles, snuggle kitties and all the paraphernalia associated with hand rearing a cub. The farm workers had picked up a small leopard cub in the bush very thin and dehydrated. As the farmer’s wife was coming in to Otjiwarongo to have her hair done she would bring the cub so I arranged to meet her at the hairdressers, crate in hand. Pickles, as we came to name her, was a very frightened ball of fluff with extremely sharp teeth and claws.  

Upon returning to Africat I weighed her [1.6 kilos] so I could work out her food intake and set about mixing up kitten milk in a small baby bottle. We figured she was about one month old, her eyes were open but were still blue [a leopards eyes turn yellow as it gets older and I will let you all know when that happens], one of the problems with having a cub whose eyes have already opened is that it has already seen it’s Mother and therefore has bonded to her and her scent. If you get a cub whose eyes have not yet opened then you are the first thing it sees and you are Mum and this makes life a lot easier in more ways than one. Having lived a wild life for a month it is not easy for the cub to adjust to being with people and in a strange environment, its instinct kicks in and all it wants to do is run away and hide. The first feeding attempt bears witness to this as it was a somewhat bloody affair [for me not Pickles].

 She had already drank a bit of water but after a day of not accepting any milk we decided to try some minced chicken which she devoured in seconds. That left only one of the three vital functions a cub has to perform to survive, this last one was achieved three days later. I think it was the fact that I had threatened a squirt of liquid paraffin that bought about this momentous occasion but it was a nice healthy size, shape and consistency and being experts on this subject both Carla and I were very happy to see it. 

The fact that she was on to solids saved us a lot of work and it meant that we could start getting her used to eating food that is high in calcium which is essential at this early age. One cub is always a problem as they need extra attention, if there are siblings at least they play together even if you are not around, they need to be stimulated and have lots of exercise. They learn all about stalking and hunting through play and my Zimmer frame does not allow me to move around as fast as I should! We decided to try and introduce her to Coco Bean, the African wild cat that we got as a kitten in February. He is now coming and going as he pleases through the cat flap and occasionally bringing presents in for Carla.

They hit it off immediately. At first Pickles was not sure what to do when Beanie jumped on her and started biting her neck and all she did was cry, after two days she realized she was also equipped with some formidable weapons and started retaliating. Now there days are spent together, we have an outside area where they can get some sunshine, also very important for the absorption of vitamin D and they spend a lot of time in the house chasing each other around. Beanie can still go in and out of his cat flap and does so once the annoying brat gets too much. Pickles spends the nights at my house and sleeps some of the time on my bed, luckily she has got used to the litter tray and has stopped wetting the bed, Carla thinks it may be me as I am getting on a bit!!! I will keep you informed as to her progress but I think everyone, accept Coco Bean, realises that they cannot stay together for ever.

The 7^th had me traveling to the Waterberg area to pick up a leopard. It turned out to be female which had unfortunately got its tail broken by the door of the trap, it was not just a break as the end of the bone was exposed about 6 inches from the end of the tail and I suspected it needed amputating. Once I returned to Africat I called Axel, our vet, and arranged for him to see the leopard. I drove the leopard into the vets on Sunday as I had to go and pick up a cheetah Mother and 4 cubs on Monday. 

I was told the cubs were about 6 months old, small terrier size, so using two cars I loaded one large crate and four smaller crates that would accommodate four terrier size cheetahs. Upon reaching the farm and seeing the cheetahs I could see a slight problem, the cubs were at least 13 months old and somewhat larger than a terrier more like an Alsatian. As long as they stayed laying down then all was fine, luckily with the drugs in their system they were fairly drowsy and once back at Africat I transferred them into larger crates. They were released, with Mum, the next morning no worse for wear.

That same day I had to pick up the leopard from the Vets, now sporting a somewhat shorter tail, and take her to a farm in Otavi for release which went well.

Ah bliss, four days with no pick ups. The 16^th saw the arrival of Gerhard Steenkamp, our dental Vet from South Africa, he was going to try and get trough 20 of our cheetahs that desperately needed some dental work which consisted of root canals and extractions. Although this meant I needed to dart some cheetahs it was a very sedate week for me as he normally spent 3 hours on each animal and for some a lot longer. Gerhard managed to work on 13 of the cheetahs [we started with the worse cases first] and now we are left with our older cheetahs having to eat soft foods only due to the lack of teeth.

On the 20^th I weighed Pickles, she had doubled her weight in two weeks and was now 3.2 kilos and had calmed down somewhat.

Towards the end of the month I had to go to Kamenjab to pick up a female leopard, our 20^th this year. Then on the 31^st I had to take Spike, our oldest cheetah at 17 years, to the vets as her left eye was clouding over. She has remained at the Vets for continued treatment.

More next month.