Another day working on cats

I had another week working on the cat section yesterday – With a working camera I’m pleased to say!

I thought I’d start my blog with this picture of Yazhi. I didn’t get to go into the enclosure with her today but I did say hello to her through the bars.

I’m going to start at the end of the day and tell you all what I complete idiot I was yesterday. I’d had a really great day and then I managed to ruin it in a complete moment of madness.

Kush, the female snow leopard is currently ill and so she’s on antibiotics. Martin, who was running the section for the day gave me some meat with the medication hidden inside to go and give to her. Somehow, and I still do not know how I possibly confused them, I managed to give it to Aaron by mistake instead.

What more or less happened was that Aaron was outside, so I unlocked the indoor enclosure to see if Kush was there and there was a snow leopard in there. Without really thinking about it, I just assumed it was Kush, but of course Aaron had somehow seen me and sneaked inside. There is no real excuse for it however, it’s really obvious which is which and I should have double checked with myself before giving the meds.

I feel really, really bad about it. I spoke to Jenny this morning on the phone and went over what had happened. She was quite nice about it all and told me that both Kush and Aaron are fine, but of course it could easily have been a lot worse.

Here’s an old picture of Aaron that I’m sure I’ve posted before:

Back to the beginning of the day now, my first task was to clean the white lions’ indoor enclosure (which is next to Yazhi’s). The indoor enclosures are quite easy to do. I thought I’d give you an illustrated guide on how to clean a cat enclosure:

Step 1 – Sort through the old straw crating two piles, one of dry straw, the other of wet straw. This sounds simple, but sometimes it’s actually quite difficult to tell what is damp and what isn’t.

Step 2 – Bag up the damp straw – This is then thrown away in the general waste – Unlike most of the waste from the animals, the rubbish from the cats cannot be put on the compost heap due to the high levels of ammonia.

Step 3 – Empty the old water from the trough over the floor of the enclosure and then squeegee it off to give it a clean.

Step 4 – Finally get some new straw to replace what you have removed, and arrange it to form a nice bed.

As you can see from the photo, the three white lions don’t have anything else in the enclosure with them but this depends on the cat. Many of the enclosures have split level platforms, and the jaguars have things to climb on as well to keep them occupied.

I also got to do a couple of ‘firsts’ – I got to watch Tom do the ‘Feed a Big Cat’ Experience which was something I hadn’t seen before. I was quite jealous to watch the chap feed Rocky and Narnia the two tigers.

I also got to do a couple of the feeds – This only involved throwing large chunks of meat over the fences to the cheetahs and white lions, but still, I was thrilled to be able to do it and now just clean out enclosures for one.

This is one of the beautiful white lions just before he was fed:

Facts of the Week

Snow Leopards

• Snow leopards are found in the mountain ranges of South and Central Asia
• There are estimated to be between 3,500 to 7,000 left in the wild.
• Their long, powerful hind legs enable them to jump up to 30 feet – approximately 6 times their own body length.
• Snow leopards sometimes wrap their thick furry tails around their face and body to keep warm while resting.