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Published: September 2nd 2008
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Sunday dawned bright and clear, and I crawled out of bed far earlier than I’d have liked. Nominally a day of rest, some jobs still need to be done, and today I had agreed to drive our new cheetah keeper; Kate; on the rounds of all our pens, checking for damage to the fences.
From the office it’s 24 km to the big enclosure on our neighbouring farm of Bellebenno, and the road wends its way through some lovely scenery. Away to the right rises the deep red of the Waterberg Plateau, while all around us are the browns and greens of the acacia bush. Ahead on the road we see a steenbok scamper away from the throaty roar of our old diesel, while other, larger antelope, raise their heads and glare at the interruption to their feeding. The drive becomes a safari in itself, as more and more wildlife is spotted. To one side a group of Oryx, on the other a few Kudu, later there are Red Hartebeest, Warthogs, Jackals and even a lone Ostrich.
Finally though, we reach the electrified fence that marks the boundary of out 64-hectare cheetah pen. It’s not actually all one space
in there, but rather a 59-hectare section that is currently home to 15 female cheetahs, a 5-hectare section with 4 males, and a few small lockdown areas where cats can be more closely monitored.
Our first real challenge of the day is to identify a young cat called Kiana. Kiana has a heart murmur and currently requires medicine every single day. I’ve met Kiana a few times before, but Kate is new to the job and doesn’t yet know all the cats by sight, so we both are working from the detailed descriptions supplied by the other, more experienced keeper; Matt.
Over by a nearby tree we spot a likely candidate. She is small (check), dark (check), and has a brilliant white tip to her tail (check). But, she is also alone, and Kiana is always accompanied by her sister Kayla. Hmmm! As we ponder whether we are really certain of our identification, another small, dark cat approaches. This one is dragging her tail, a sure sign that she is Kayla, since she cannot use her tail at all. To our delight she walks straight up to Kiana and starts nuzzling her, thus confirming beyond any doubt her identity.
After medicating Kiana - by giving her a small piece of meat with a pill inside - we set off around the inside of the pen. As with all wild animals, cheetahs can be unpredictable, so driving inside their enclosures requires a lot of care. Given that many of our vehicles don’t have a working speedometer, we have set a rule of second gear and no higher than 2000 rpm, most of the time though we are even slower. A few cats run behind the vehicle for a while, hoping that we are there to feed them, but Sunday is a fast day, and with no activity visible in the back of the vehicle they soon give up and return to their shady rests.
In the separated lockdown area we briefly abandon our vehicle to search Rosy’s pen for scat. Every six months we take fecal samples from all of our cats for examination back at the clinic. The samples are used partly as a health-check, and partly for ongoing research. Today though, Rosy wasn’t playing ball, and either hadn’t been, or had managed to hide her output somewhere extremely obscure. We left empty handed, and moved on to check the waterholes.
There aren’t really any natural water sources in Bellebenno, so all of the water for the cats has to be piped in from Jan Helpman (our cattle farm). The artificial waterholes in the cheetah enclosures have to be checked every day to ensure that the water is still flowing and are also cleaned on a weekly basis. Today all was fine, and we were soon on our way back out.
A few more cheetah encounters later, and we were back on the open road heading for the office once more.
Just before midday we reached the centre and fed the five cats housed there. This is somewhat different from the feeding carried out elsewhere on our property, as it is done in front of tourists. There is seldom a day when there aren’t tourists present at feeding time (2pm Mon-Fri/12pm Sat-Sun), and we take the opportunity to tell them as much as we can about the work that we do and the cats that we care for.
I can’t say that I am really a fan of tourists in general, but every now and then you find someone really interesting who asks intelligent questions and actually listens to the answers. So it was today. As an actual cheetah keeper, instead of a press-ganged assistant, Kate did most of the talking, and for a newcomer did extremely well, in fact as an anycomer did extremely well. Ron tried to steal Hermione’s food again, but she grabbed it and ran clear, while Harry just sat and munched.
With feeding over we returned to our fences. Cruise seems to be having a wasp problem with his water dish and we found it absolutely swarming with the little buggers! Very VERY cautiously we (Kate) tipped it out, cleaned it and refilled it, while all the while hoards of little yellow and black insects buzzed furiously around. I’m not sure why only Cruise is affected, but according to Matt he had the same problem last year at about this time. In an attempt to mitigate the problem we took the unused water bowl from the empty pen next door and placed that in Cruise’s pen also, a few metres away from the first. I’m not hopeful however.
The last group of enclosures consist of our quarantine pens; for new arrivals, or those that are injured and require close monitoring; and a pair of enclosures for four big males. A few months ago, a member of our large warthog population made the mistake of digging his way under the fence of the pen housing Gremlin and Josie. He didn’t get far. When we came past to check the fences and feed that day, we found two very happy cats who absolutely didn’t need the 2 kgs of donkey meat we’d brought them. The hole in the fence was about ten metres away and the majority of the blood was approximately midway between. They remained uninterested in any other food for several days.
Today, the fence inspection was entirely routine with no holes to be found. It was a nice drive though, and a great opportunity for me to get to know our new keeper.
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