Page 31 - Thola Issue 17

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EARLY BEGINNINGS
My fascination with smaller cats
began after a personal tragedy and subsequent chance meeting with Dr Mircea Pfleider, an IUCN cat specialist and Austrian researcher, who was working in South Africa at the time. After hearing about Mircea’s research on southern African smaller cat species that include Caracal, Serval, Black- footed Cats and African Wild Cats,
my husband Richard and I wanted
to learn more about these intriguing creatures. As a professional hunter, Richard travelled all over the Eastern Cape and found that there were very few sightings of Black-footed Cats (now referred to as Small Spotted Cats) and African Wild Cats. Mircea approached us to look after her wild cats when she returned to Europe. We decided that we needed to take this opportunity to raise awareness of the plight of these species and breed them in captivity for release or swop genes with selected breeders.
A NEW START
After a few years, we decided to
establish a non-profit trust called the
Cat Conservation Trust. SARS granted us Public Benefit Organisation (PBO) status in October 2005. The founding trustees are my husband and myself, with additional trustees Walter Schulze (attorney) and Lalase Maso (environmental officer). The patrons are Ms Beryl Wilson, Dr Kevin Robertson and Dr Mircea Pfleiderer. Mircea, who conducts her research
under the name Karoo Cat Research
(visit www.cat-research.com for further information), lives in Germany for six months, with the remaining six months spent in South Africa on a farm not far from our own Clifton Farm. Her South African farm boasts several enclosures that are home to all four cat species. Richard and I ‘baby-sit’ Mircea’s cats when she is in Europe. We keep all
four species of the smaller wild cats at our facilities, not only to breed them, but more importantly, to research their behaviour and compare it with cats found in the wild. Joint decisions are made as far as placing the offspring is concerned.
ABOVE: Richard and Marion Holmes and Jeane Grieve (Taxidermy Africa) giving a cat presentation at Woodridge College 2014.
FAR LEFT: A female Black-footed Cat.
The cats are all kept in comfortable
and spacious enclosures at our Clifton facility. They are moved between enclosures depending on species composition and the number of cats. Most of the food comes from our hunting operation. This gives the cats
a supply of free range, organic meat
in addition to fresh blood, organs, brains, skin, feathers, etc. It is extremely important that their diet is a varied predatory diet that does not include domestic livestock. Cats can easily become overweight or sick on a diet
of domestic livestock due to the high fat content and artificial hormones contained within the meat of such animals. The cats are fed two small meals each day – in the early morning and late afternoon. We employ two men on a full-time basis to help look after the cats. Three women are also employed part-time to help with meat processing and food preparation. They receive on- the-job training for the highly specialised care that the cats require.
BLACK-FOOTED CATS
We have recently entered into an agreement with Wild Cats World to look after their three Black-footed Cats. Black-footed Cats are the smallest cat species in Africa and the second smallest in the world. These amazing
little cats have a high metabolic rate, which requires that they catch a vertebrate prey animal every hour. Their kill success rate is phenomenal. These extremely shy and elusive animals are rarely seen and few people in South Africa even know of their existence, as the media tends to focus on the large predators only.
The Black-footed Cat is extremely difficult to keep in captivity. There are less than 100 individuals in captivity worldwide, with a mortality rate of more than 70%. The fatal kidney disease amyloidosis, which is also found
thola: VOLUME 17. 2014/15
Were it not for us keeping these cats in captivity, visiting schools and advocating for a change in farming attitudes, they would be further down the road to annihilation.
Photo credit: Roslyn Pienaar