Cheetah
mother and cubs in the Masai Mara, Kenya
I had read about
Africa as a kid as I am sure a lot of you have. I
have seen the movies and dreamed of being out on
safari. I think to this day, "Hatari" with
John Wayne is still one of my favorite movies. (Just
as a side note, the place I was staying is one of
the places they filmed the movie and Simon had a
few stories to tell about that!) It is very hard
to explain Africa until you experience it. It was
magical for me. I have been to other parts of the
world and I truly love South America but Africa was
different. You see so many animals it is incredible.
I was blessed to see as many cats as I did. I saw
4 different leopards, 2 females and 2 males. Three
of them we saw in the day light and one at night.
I saw 20+ lions, some in a pride and some by themselves.
In the Masai Mara we found a cheetah and her 4 cubs.
The photo above is mom with two of the cubs. To top
off my time in the Mara we found a serval. What a
joy for a cat person, to see so many different cats.
I have a goal of trying to see as many different
species of cats in the wild as I can. I am up to
8 and counting out of the 36 different wild species.
I just received
and e-mail from Simon and he said he saw her again
the other night. It was great fun at night, the buffaloes
don't know what to think of you. I must have seen
at least a 100 dik dik and many waterbuck,
giraffe, zebra, gazelle and I could go on. I had
great fun watching the spring hares bounce around
like kangaroos. Every once in a while you would find
a warthog that forgot to go down into it's hole and
when we showed up it really did not know what to
do.
As I said, and
will say over and over, it was MAGICAL! If you have
the opportunity to take a trip to see Africa, do
not and I repeat, do not turn it down. If you are
interested in taking a trip with the staff of the
Cat Haven, we are going to start planning trip every
year to let you share the experience. If you would
like to travel on your own we can put you in contact
with people that can arrange the trip for you. All
I say is: "GO". It will be worth every
dime you spend.
I also want to
put a small plug in for Daphne Sheldrick and the
work she is doing with elephants. I am not an elephant
guy but this lady is doing some wonderful work. She
is the only person that has successfully taken captive
elephants and returned them back to the wild. If
you some extra money adopt one of her baby ele's. Sheldrick
Wildlife Trust She is located at Nairobi National
Park, Kenya
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Many
years ago I met an artist, Simon Combes. I shared
my vision of building the Project Survival's Cat Haven
and working to save wild cats. He came and saw the
property before anything was built and I think, he
was able to understand the vision of my crazy dream.
We stayed in touch over the years and sometime back
he asked if I could help him with a project. He wanted
to see if they could reintroduce cheetahs back to
an area where he lives in Kenya. I am by no means
a a cheetah expert and do not work with cheetahs,
but I was able to help find some people that are
experts. Cheetahs are
very different from other cats, both in there requirements
and needs.
In the summer of 2001, the Cat Haven was part of an
art show and Simon was asked to be the judge. He was
finishing a tour of the United States painting a marvelous
bear rendering, traveling from gallery to gallery and
made his last stop the Cat Haven. During his stay we
talked about me coming over to Kenya and seeing the
area where the cheetahs might go. I could not pass
up an offer like that and away I went to Kenya in November
2001.
The
first leopard I saw in the wild, Nakuru
The cats are
not the only animals I was able to see but, they
are the most important. I break the world into 2
categories, cats and cat food! I did not go to Africa
to see the cat food, but it is fun to see other animals.
The photo on the left was interesting because it
was about 9:30 in the morning and this hippo was
about 2 km from water. Simon was happy to have me
around because we seemed to see the unusual when
I was there. We made several night trips and was
able to see animals you are not able to see during
the day. We were happy to see 2 different ant bears
(aardvarks). From what I was told over there, ant
bears are animals you just don't see, period. I did
not get a photo but I will always have a vivid memory
in my mind that I hope I never loose. I did get a
photo of the leopard we saw at night. She was a great
cats and could care less that we were there with
her.
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