Scene from walkway

Today though, I dropped in on Port Lympne Wildlife Park to see how things were progressing with the Your Cat walkways which have been dogged by delays and now bad weather too!

The entire park is on a very steep hill and the main Scottish wildcat enclosure is right at the top, buried amongst some dense trees and in a natural depression to keep the winds off as it comes in from the nearby coast. All of the support posts which will hold up the walkway have been securely fitted (some of them had to be dug through sold rocks!), all the welding has been done to accommodate the wildly undulating floor and the main walkway planks are now being finished off.

The walkway snakes out of the enclosure, up out of the depression and right to the edge of the steep hillside, giving them a view something like in the picture on the right.

You can’t quite make it out in the haze but that’s the English Channel in the distance with a mixture of agriculture and marshland running up to the park boundaries, there are enormous numbers of birds circling around all over the place plus the African elephants to check out just below.

Of course the wildcats have no idea what an amazing view awaits them but we all know how much cats love to sit and watch a good view, wildcats are no different and I expect they’ll spend a huge amount of time up there as the walkways are being made big enough for them to sit up straight or lay down and sleep there if they want to.

I’ll hold off on promising exactly when but we’ll have lots of photos in Your Cat Magazine as soon as the walkways are finished.

Wildwood tell me their walkways are close to finished too and everyone at Camperdown in Dundee is thrilled to have just over £1000 towards their new wildcat enclosures thanks to Your Cat readers; they’re getting started on developing their woodland habitat planting lots of new trees, and next year we’re arranging for Neville from Port Lympne to visit and help them design a really superb new enclosure.

So a big thank you to you all once again from me, the SWA, the various keepers and park owners and most of all the wildcats who are getting so much more than a little extra space!

PS! We’ll be at the GCCF Supreme Show next month with a table and have very kindly been given some time for me to speak a little about the wildcat at the Club Row Talks just before lunch, I hope we get to meet a few of you there!