I cannot believe that three and a half months have gone by since I made the last entry. The last year or so seems to have whizzed by so why should the last three months be any different? The difficult thing now is to remember what happened, I will do my best and in future I will leave notes to remind me to do the monthly diary entries, fingers crossed that I remember to read them!!

February saw Carla and I coming to the end of a well needed 3 week break in Cape Town. We needed to charge our batteries and spent our time wandering amongst the well stocked isles in the supermarkets looking in awe at the different types of breads available [our normal choice is brown or white!] The Holiday went well up until the last week when we had to take Carla’s dog, Zorro, to the vets as he was not eating. First thought to be a dodgy tummy due to eating Kelp on the beach it was found that he had two enormous tumours in his lower intestines. We had planned a course of chemo to start a few days after diagnosis but unfortunately by the day of his first treatment we could see he was not well and had to have him put down.

Wanting to bring him home we had him cremated and carried his ashes back with us. This was obviously a very sad end to a great holiday but on our return to AfriCat we were given something to help take our minds off of the tragedy. Enter Coco, an African Wild Cat kitten, he was rescued from a veldt fire by the husband of our hairdresser. She looked after him until we returned from holiday so he spent 2 weeks with a Jack Russell puppy playing incessantly.

No longer having the Jack Russell to play with we had to try and fill his boots and entertain our new charge, his energy seemed endless and we had to come up with new and inventive ways to keep him happy. He has grown amazingly fast and has even grown to accept me as part of the family. He is now old enough to go out into the big wide world on his own and around here that can be dangerous, there are a lot of things close to us with big sharp teeth that would like to snack on a kitten, so we have tried to train him where not to go.

I had one male leopard to pick up from a farm about 100 kms away, he was in good condition and was released back into the wild.

At the end of the month I had to take Rhett, one of our 14 year old cheetahs, to the vets as he was not eating well. He was found to be riddled with cancer and had to be put down. The average age of a cheetah in the wild is thought to be between 8 and 10, in captivity it is obviously a lot longer. We mollycoddle our cats at all times but once they start to get old they get the royal treatment, once their teeth go they get soft food so they last longer than in the wild and as a consequence they are susceptible to problems that are not normally found in the wild population. Our biggest cause of death in our old captive cheetahs is kidney failure, our oldest cheetah was 21 and our oldest at the moment is 16.

March started with a call about four cheetahs caught in a trap, a Mother and three cubs about 6 months old. The farm was a fair distance away and the trip needed two cars as there were 4 cats. All went well and they spent the night with us and relocated and released the next day. With Mother and cubs the trick upon release is to keep the family together, with this in mind I devised a method whereby a slow trickle of water into a bucket on pulleys slowly opens the door about 10 mins after I leave the area, the cats can then leave at their own pace and are not stressed by humans close by.

Two more cheetahs, two 3 year old brothers, came towards the end of the month, both in fine fettle and raring to go back into the wild. Just after this pick up Scarlet, the sister of Rhett, was seen to have a lot of blood between her back legs. I darted her and found her to have a huge mammary tumour which was hidden from view by her back legs and so was not seen sooner. I took her to the vets and the tumour was removed and she has recovered well

April was relatively quiet, the first pick up was a cheetah on the 24^th, this was a solitary female of about 4 years. She was released safely back onto the farmlands.

The next emergency was that of Matata, our 14 year old male lion, he was under the weather and not wanting to eat. We got Axel, our vet, in and we drove into Matata’s camp and darted him. Axel felt some obstruction in his guts and decided to take him to Otjiwarongo for and op. The operation was a success and a large piece of bone was removed. A few days later we had a phone call from Axel asking if we could come and pick him up as he was now very much his old self and he did not want him to escape and run around Otjiwarongo causing havoc. Matata was kept separate from Tessie and Tambo as he had to have a weeks course of anti biotics but is now back in his large camp enjoying his days doing what he always did…………nothing.

The next call I had to end the month was from a farm way down in the South past Maltahoe. They had a leopard in a trap which had been killing their calves but did not want to shoot it. I left AfriCat at 1700 and stayed with friends in Windhoek, the next morning at 0500 I left Wdhk for the farm eventually reaching it at 1300. After a bite to eat I was asked if I could have a look at two calves that had been attacked but not killed by the same animal. When I did I could see that the animal that had attacked them was not a leopard but in fact a spotted Hyaena, the wounds from a leopard attack are normally around the throat and neck, these were all around the rear end of the animal which is consistent with an attack by spotted Hyaena.

The farmers were then more than willing to release the leopard back onto their farm but were very apologetic to me for the long trip I had made for nothing, as they put it. I assured them that the end result was the best I could have hoped for and told them I would try and find out ways for them to protect their cattle from the Hyaena. I returned to AfriCat after driving 1350 kms.

Everyone involved with the AfriCat Foundation is very conscious of the fragile existence of the Namibian cheetah, indeed everyone involved with the AfriCat Foundation is centred on preserving this magnificent creature. Conflict with man has seen the cheetah’s habitat drastically reduced putting it at risk to the extent that it was classified as vulnerable.

A recent and very disturbing news article informed us that this classification has been re-assessed and the world’s fastest animal is now classed as “endangered”. If ever there was a time to focus and intensify our work then now is surely the time. The only way to reverse this tragic situation is by supporting the work of the AfriCat Foundation through its rescue and more importantly its education programmes which will teach local formers to live in harmony with the cheetah and thus preserve one of Namibia’s most valuable assets. This unique creature deserves our help and we have a duty to do all we possibly can.

If you would like to be a part of this world saving project please make a donation and no matter how small it will make a difference and 100% of your donation will go towards  saving the cheetah from extinction…thank you.