Archive for the ‘Cats’ Category
Jack Russell Terrier, Yamato, is fully recovered now. The swelling has gone down completely and the pain subsided. Now, she is back to her normal business chasing lizards and birds in the garden. It is amazing how much the inbred instinct is strong in this breed, it is almost impossible to stop them from hunting small animals.
Talking about hunting instinct, my maid Jane’s grey cat brought back the body of the snake killed by Yamato from nearby bush and made Jane scream by placing it on top of her bed. Later he was tossing around a dead frog and off course he had to show Jane what a splendid prey he caught by putting it on top of her table…
It is about time I introduce my feline family members.
and
*All the names are in Japanese, not Swahili.
The trap is proving itself successful. I come over to Kichwa Tembo in the morning to check if there is any cat caught in the trap. The one of the waiter, Mike, from the restaurant is now responsible for setting of the trap. There was a prize for capturing a cat (offered by the manager) and Mike is quite excited about this side business. I see him running around the camp carrying cat cages. He catches cat on daily basis, sometimes capturing two or three in a day. After capturing the cat, he transfers it to the temporally holding cage before I arrive. This is a great help for me as I cannot really stay at Kichwa until 10pm to set a trap and retrieve the cat while I run around the boma for livestock treatment. After the spay, I keep the cat for two days before it is released outside the reserve. During this time, the Mike offered to feed the cat. This morning he told me that the post-op cat is doing well and that he fed nyama (meat) and given it maziwa (milk) as well. I was so impressed. I went to see the cage and cat seemed to be doing ok. I found nice piece of nyama inside the cage, but I started laughing when I saw the drink Mike offered to the cat.
Mike put the milk carton inside the cage for cat to drink, but for obvious reason the cat was not able to touch the milk. I told him that it would be much better if he can pour it on a plate. After this incident, Mike the catman is now a excellent cat catcher and a good animal care taker at Kichwa Tembo.
The previous night’s work was repaid fruitfully by capture of big female cat. She was extremely wild. When someone comes close to the cage, she went wild and even flipped her cage. One guy tried to move the cage and got badly scratched. Most people here are not used to handling dogs and cats, he had no idea that the cat can scratch when it is still inside the cage. Thank god I borrowed a cat squeeze cage from KSPCA. There is no way I am going to inject anesthetic to this crazy cat without a squeeze cage. I spayed the cat just outside the laundry place in Kichwa which was the only place I could get access to running water. I have never done any surgery with thirty people looking over my shoulder. Maasai guys couldn’t believe that cat will survive after having its stomach cut open. The light is poor to perform surgery and I do need a small surgery room with decent lighting and running water system in the near future.
Today was a long day. I vaccinated dogs in several bomas all morning followed by deworming 200 sheeps and making blood smears from 50 cattle. At miday, my car broke and I had to drive back to garage in Kichwa Tembo. I drove over a rock and it broke off the exhaust pipe so it had to be welded back. In the evening, I went to Kichwa Tembo to set up a cat trap. There are lots of domestic cats living near the hotels within the reserve due to easily available food scraps from the kitchen area. I suspect that they originated from Maasai boma around the reserve and migrated to the lodges. There are almost twenty cats inside Kichwa Tembo, killing small rodents and wild birds. The reserve regulation prohibits any domestic animals inside the wildlife protected area. They must be captured and released outside the reserve. Easily said, but removing domestic cat which turned almost wild as any other small carnivore is not an easy task. Something interesting with domestic cats is their adaptability to the environment. They can easily be tamed by human, but they can also be easily become wild when given the right environment. They are highly agile and cautious so capturing them was almost impossible without a trap. For this trip, I was planning on capturing the domestic cats and spaying/castrating them before releasing them outside the reserve. I came with a cat trap from KSPCA (Kenya Society of Protection and Care ｓof Animals) and Kichwa Tembo workshop made a temporally holding cage. If all goes well, tomorrow I will be doing operation on captured cat.
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