Back from Ethiopia

I just got back from Ethiopia and I did see the remaining cub. Patch, the one eyed cub, passed away about 2 weeks before I had arrived – although there was a bit of a necropsy, there were no definitive findings as to why the cub had died. He had been doing well, I was told. The other cub, Scout, was there and I did meet him. Both cats were males, originally they thought that Scout was a female – but he is certainly a male!

I did take a photo of the cub – unfortunately, although he is not skinny, he is suffering from a nutritional deficiency and he has bad legs, so we are looking now at our options as to how to get x-rays, how we might go about surgery there in Addis – with no real animal clinic.

The cub is very sweet – he goes out every day with his keepers in the gardens, and he is very gentle and likes to be petted. We spent quite a bit of time with him and I was able to teach the caretakers more about how to best handle the cheetah and care for it. The cage is small, however it was clean – so I was pleased with that.

We went to where we plan to help build a new pen for the cub – this will be a fairly large area, with grass, and fallen trees for Scout to climb and play on. The US Ambassador has adopted Scout and will be going to the Palace weekly to see how the cub is doing. She and other members of the US Embassy will be helping to build Scout a new cage.

But, we also have 40 orphan cheetahs in Namibia that we need to care for long-term so please visit our web page at http://www.cheetah.org/?nd=53 to help us care for these cheetahs that are not luckily enough to live in the wild.

Until next time,

Laurie Marker