Cats at Paradise

I know that I have been particularly poor with my blog recently - in fact I haven't posted anything since I got back from Kenya. This has been for a number of reasons but to be honest it's just been difficult getting back into the habit of posting on a Sunday night after I've been at the zoo.

Today I thought that I would focus on the group of animals which I have yet to blog about at Paradise Park; and that is the cats.

Paradise Wildlife Park have a very large collection of big cats and for a couple of weeks after I got back from Kenya I was delighted to be able to work with them. Unfortunately this didn't involve playing with them as I had the lion cubs South Africa, but I did get to clean out their enclosures and prepare their food.

One of the enclosures I got to clean out was the outside tiger enclosure, while they were being kept in the smaller outside enclosure. I was warned not to go too near the dividing fence and to make sure that the broom was kept away from it as well. This made me quite nervous when sweeping the path next to the fence, especially while Narnia, the white tiger was pacing up and down and snarling at me as if I was going to be her next meal! Rocky the big male seemed less concerned and just waited patiently until I had finished hiding their dinner around the place.

I have to admit that I love all the cats at the park and it’s very difficult to just pick out a few favourites. The jaguars are beautiful and graceful; unfortunately I’ve yet to get any nice photos of them. One of my other favourites is the snow leopards. Below is a picture of one of them, right against the gate as we were trying to coax him into the inside enclosure.

Here is the big male tawny lion (they also have white lions in a separate enclosure) having a sleep in the sun.

Finally, I want to introduce you to the newest member of the cat family. This is Yazhi, a 14 week old puma cub who arrived at the park a coupe of weeks ago. She is so beautiful and at the moment is only slightly bigger than a domestic cat. I of course wanted to go in and play with her but there are straight rules of who is allowed in her enclosure. I did get Andrew who was one of the cat keepers on Sunday to take a couple of photos of her while he was with her in the enclosure.

I hope that you have enjoyed my blog post for today. Sorry again for the lack of posts recently. I have been taking pictures still so hopefully I’ll have some more for you next week.