What Your Donation Provides

What your donations have helped to achieve.
Over the years, your generous donations have made a difference to both the animals that either stay at AfriCat and the ones that thankfully, continue their journey onwards once it has been confirmed they have a clean bill of health.
It has also made a huge difference to our team that runs the foundation.  Dave though, would be of the mind that we are only raising the funds to give him a larger workload.

Like the Shade camps that he has built, required for when the cats have been darted to enable them to recover in the cool shadows away from the fierce sun.

The catchment areas are designed so that the captive animals can be brought together easily.  They are fed and watered from the same place each day, this gives the AfriCat staff a visual sighting of all the cats on a daily basis, cats can then be individually selected for the yearly health checks.  They can also be checked for any minor injuries and any medication required can be easily administered.

As the country is so vast, vehicles are I’m afraid a necessary evil as the team covers many miles rescuing and releasing cats during the course of a year. Add to this the normal every day feeding and camp maintenance requirements, put together with the harsh weather conditions means that vehicle maintenance is a constant expensive necessity.
There is also the fuel to run them, and no one needs reminding of the price of fuel.

A percentage of the food and the mineral supplement cost that animals require is provided by the funding from your donations.

You have helped towards constructing a new purpose made food preparation building; this includes a cutting and sawing room, a chill room, and large walk in fridges. The rooms are totally tiled and wash down facilities installed for ease of cleaning and maintaining hygiene standards.

We help provide medicines, vaccinations, drugs, and general surgical supplies for the on-site clinic, where minor injuries can be treated.
We also help to provide blood-sampling equipment used for cat welfare.

You funded the installation of a new communication system, after the old one was rendered completely useless after a lightning strike during a violent thunderstorm.
This consisted of new computers, printers, fax machines and a satellite link up with the internet to speed up correspondence with the outside world.

We have recently funded the purchase of new radio collars, in readiness for the completion of the new larger rehabilitation area, where it is AfriCat’s intention, to introduce more orphaned cheetahs of the right age in the next stage of a new life of freedom.

The recently received proposals requested from AfriCat Namibia are listed below:

NEW TYRES FOR THE AFRICAT FEEDING CAR
The AfriCat Hilux, used primarily for feeding the animals in the welfare project, is badly in need of new tyres. Although feeding and working for AfriCat is its major role its other important job is that of a fire-fighting vehicle during the dry season and therefore needs reliable tyres.

BUDGET-GASTROSCOPE FOR ANNUAL HEALTH CHECKS AND GENERALGASTRIC PROBLEMS IN ANIMALS
During the annual health checks all animals are inspected for signs of gastritis, biopsis from the stomach wall are taken and tested in South Africa. When individual cats get gastric problems a gastroscope is essential in the diagnosis. Previously we had to borrow a gastroscope from a local Vet clinic unfortunately this equipment is no longer working.

IN HOUSE SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT BUDGET-DIGITAL VIDEO RECORDER AND CAMERAS FOR 24-HOUR SURVEILLANCE OF YOUNG ANIMALS IN THE PROPOSED NURSERY
With the building of the proposed nursery looming ever nearer a system to keep an eye on the young animals in our care whilst cutting down on the stress of continual disturbance is a must. Each of the 4 rooms will have a vandal proof dome camera set up to record the movements of the animals within. These in turn will relay a signal to a 16 channel Digital Video Recorder connected to a PC. A future possibility is that the pictures being sent to the PC could be broadcast worldwide via the internet. In all cases the animal’s welfare is paramount and, as with most youngsters, sickness is a real threat to life. This system will enable us to view them at any time of day or night thus ensuring their continued good health.

FIELD ANALYSIS EQUIPMENT BUDGET-DIGITAL SCOUTING CAMERAS
While useful for many applications the digital scouting camera’s main function will be to give us a sighting of our orphaned leopards once they leave the nursery and go into the 1 hectare camp. The whole idea of them going into the camp is that they are not seen, to cut down on their habituation. The camera, set up at the feeding point, is triggered by the movement of the leopard and thus enables us to monitor the animals’ welfare without the habituation.

BUDGET-MACRO LENS FOR DIGITAL STILLS CAMERA
The Canon Digital stills camera kit, kindly donated by Ivan Carter and Becci and Mark Crowe, has proved an invaluable asset. The camera is used for the sponsorship photographs, publicity stills and shots for the newsletter etc. The ability to be able to go out and take a photograph when needed and have it on the computer within minutes of taking it is it’s biggest asset. One use, that we did not foresee, was that of photographing medical problems and then e-mailing them to the vets. When a diagnosis was possible from the photograph it would save the cat from unnecessary stress due to darting as well as save us the expense of the drugs. Although we have two lenses, the 24-85mm and the 100-400mm, we are lacking in the close up range. A macro lens would be ideal for the smaller wounds/problems that occur as well as for photographing the microscope slides when doing the faecal flotation tests for worms in the cats. There are many varieties of parasite and many need professional identification before a medication is prescribed.

All the above proposals have been successfully funded.