The Saga of Boxing Cats

We’ve just been through two hectic weeks – all 49 captive cheetah at CCF were brought into the clinic for their medical checkups. Our two cheetah keepers here, Matt and Kate worked for weeks just to plan the whole thing, along with our two vet technicians/ nurses to prepare the clinic. Once all the planning was done, a team of vets and vet nurses from the U.S. descended on CCF (along with six other, normal volunteers) to help with the medicals. However, getting the cats to the clinic is where all the fun and games really begin…

The basic idea is to put a large wooden box at an entrance to the pen where the cat is and persuade it to walk into the box, after which a board is slid over the entrance of the box (by a person standing on top) and four people carry it to a bakkie. Of course, things rarely happen quite so smoothly when it comes to felines. Most of the cats had been through an annual checkup before and seemed to know exactly what we were planning and how to outsmart us.

As most of the cheetah pens are designed with a narrow runway corridor in the cage, the plan was generally to get a few people with sticks to look menacing and ‘chase’ the cat into the runway. Once in the runway (consisting of a wire gate at each end with pulley-operated guillotines built into the gates), the cat was meant to walk/run to the end where the box was placed and the door would be closed behind them. In cases where the cat refused point blank to enter a dark box, we would have to put a ‘squeeze cage’ (a wire cage with guillotines at each end) in the place of the box and hope that the cat would walk into it.

Ideally, everything works out well and the cat is boxed without too much stress – a rather rare event at CCF. The main problem lies with our cats that are still wild enough to be dangerous, yet ‘tame’ enough to have very little fear of humans. Among these cats are the chocolate girls (sisters of the cats released into NamibRand) – Toblerone, Hershey and Nestle. In one instance, as people were trying to ‘encourage’ Toblerone into a smaller area, she cleared the fence (about 2m high) of her pen to escape into the neighbouring pen where her sisters were. If we managed to get the cats into the runway, they were rather unwilling to walk to the end where the box was standing.

These cats (and others with similar attitudes) forced the keepers to come up with a better plan of getting the cat down the runway and into the box. Luckily, we had a volunteer cheetah keeper from the San Diego Zoo (Kim) come to help our keepers during this stressful time. Kim described a method of boxing cats they use in San Diego: when the cat is in the runway, the keepers would use specially designed boards (with eyeholes and handles) to push the cat down the runway and into the box. Our only problem was that the only boards we could get hold of were a bit short and had neither eyeholes nor handles. So, our keepers had to make do with what they had.

This new method worked very well for several of our cheetahs – they had never seen large wooden boards before, especially ones bearing down on them menacingly from the other side of the runway. Once again, one of the chocolate girls had to ruin the plan, this time it was Hershey’s turn. When we had finally convinced her to go into the runway (this takes some time with a stubborn cat), she decided to sit right next to the gate into the runway and not move an inch. As this is the gate that the keepers enter with the boards, it was impossible for them to get in the runway. So, we spent a good 15-20 minutes calling her, banging on the runway, throwing meat in the air next to the runway and every other kind of tempting/scaring techniques that came to mind. She wouldn’t budge. She sat there glaring at us with her large amber eyes and giving us the odd hiss and spit when she decided we were too close for comfort.

Predictably, as we decided to give up, she started pacing up and down the runway. This was our chance – it was all systems go: one person on top of the box, Kim and Matt with the boards and myself to keep an eye on Hershey as they pushed. They started coming towards her, and she retreated slightly towards the box – so far so good. Then, as though the thought had suddenly occurred to her, she went up on her hind legs and put her front paws on the fence next to the boards. At this stage, we started to warn Kim and Matt that she looked like she had a plan. Then, in a split second, she turned towards the board that Kim was using and leapt right over the top.

Unfortunately, on her way over, her back paw (with all claws out) landed on Kim’s hand and as she propelled herself forward, one of her claws dug into Kim’s finger. To add insult to injury, once she was over the board she whipped around, glared at Kim and Matt and swatted Kim’s leg. For a few moments, everyone reacted in slow-motion shock – what on earth just happened? Then Kim realized that her finger was bleeding rather badly and we all snapped out of it and got them out of Hershey’s cage and into the bakkie where we bandaged Kim’s finger. Luckily, her wounds weren’t too bad and although she went to the hospital to get it looked at; they said she didn’t need any stitches.

“If it’s all such a mission, why don’t they just dart the cats and get it done quickly?” I here you say. Well, with darting cats there is always a certain risk factor, as is perfectly explained by the case of Gremlin. Gremlin is a male cheetah who lives in an enclosure with another male known as Josie. The enclosure where they are kept is not well designed (runway is a bit wide) and it wouldn’t be a good idea to mess around with short boards near these boys. The only option was to dart them. The head vet from the States knew what he was doing with a dart gun (he’s been darting animals for 15 years), so he came and darted the cats.

Gremlin was darted, placed on a stretcher and brought into the clinic for his medical – pretty standard procedure. Once he had recovered from the drugs after the medical, we transported him out to his enclosure and let him go, once again, no problems. The next day we went to feed the boys, but Gremlin didn’t appear. Matt walked around the cage to peer into the runway area and found him, limping badly. He was unable to put any weight on one of his back legs and we immediately suspected that something must have gone wrong the day before.

When the vet came, he said it was likely that the dart had hit the bone in his leg and caused a slight fracture that had worsened overnight. We got him in the box again (this time we could push him with boards, knowing that he wouldn’t jump) and rushed him to the vet surgery in town. They put plates in his leg, stitched it up and gave us instructions to put him in a small area where he wouldn’t be able to move around and injure it again. We prepared a small cement room for him (with fresh hay to sleep on and a place to put his food and water) and placed him in there after coming back from the vet the next day. Sadly, he doesn’t seem very well at the moment and often refuses to eat his food (chunks of donkey meat). Hopefully, he’ll get back to his old self and we can send him back to his enclosure with his buddy Josie.

Even though the annual medical checkups are all finished, our cat boxing saga is far from over. Some of the cats need to have dentist work done, so we will have to box them and take them into town. One of these cats is our old boy, Cruise (12 years old) who managed to jump over the cheetah keepers’ boards just the other day – luckily no-one was injured. For good reason, we aren’t keen on darting him (our team of vets left after the annuals), so we’d better think it out again…