by Maria Giulia Checchi –

So, you finally got your own enclosure and it’s time to decorate. No no no, don’t get too excited for this part, as you will have no say in the matter. But the keepers I contracted are rather good. I can vouch for them! They think about your ecology, something of a foreign subject for them, before they diligently assemble a range of contraptions that they collectively call ‘enrichment’. Toys, if you want, but for fully fledged wildcats instead of human children. Here! I’ll run you through some of mine, and not just to show off how cool they are.

Ok, ok. This is the first: a tyre. You’ll see it as soon as you enter my enclosure; it’s impossible to miss it. It swings from a rope and sometimes I find food inside it, while other times it’s above it, and others still it’s not even there but somewhere else entirely! This enrichment literally keeps me on my toes, always making me wonder if food is going to be there when I lift myself on my hind legs to have a peak.

Moving on: look at this! It’s a… Actually I’m not sure if it has a name. If so, my keepers never mentioned it. Anyway, it’s made of untreated wood, as you can see. Still suspended by a rope and with many tinier black ropes on it called, if I’m not mistaken, ‘zap-ties’. Here’s how it works. I would rather demonstrate, you know? I find that a visual aid is always more useful than a description, but I’ve already taken all the food from it today, so you’ll have to indulge me. Right: food is tied on different parts of it by the use of ‘zap-ties’, and I have to jump up or even climb it, hanging tight with my paws as I work the food out of its bonds, before jumping down in triumph. This is one of my favourites, so much so that I get to have two.

And here we have yet another contraption: a rope. You start to see a pattern, don’t you? Rope here, rope there, but this one is actually magical! It’s a rope that fights back. Keepers feed it by tying my food to it, yet the rope doesn’t eat the food, instead taunting me to come and get it. And so I do, but as I pull, it pulls back, and I really need to lock my jaw in place and hold my ground if I don’t want to get defeated by it. Sometimes I lose a battle, but never the war, and as the food springs back, I observe the disordinate chaos of the recoil in preparation for my next attack. It’s so fun! It would be unkind to call ‘bungee’ my arch-nemesis since we have such a great time together, but it’s true that sometimes I just wish it would make life easier for me.

And here comes the last of the ‘feeding enrichments’; the decorations where food is placed. This one has food ‘in’ rather than ‘on’ it, and it annoyingly rolls away when I attempt to figure out a way to make its treasures mine. Can you try and guess how? Alright, alright, I’ll tell you: you need to put your paws in the holes and force the prey out. But they have different sizes, understand? You might need to put your paw through one to push the food towards another and then get it from there. You can thank me later for the tip.

Yet not all of my enrichment has to do with food, although that is certainly a good way to get me interested in something. Sometimes they have to do with your nose. And so one day you might get some deer skin. It has a very gamey smell, something new and that I only tend to get a whiff of from the wind blowing on the surrounding moorland. Its hair is longer than mine and has a different colour, and I love rubbing against it to exchange smells with it.

And here is the most exciting news: word has been going on that if our keepers get enough funding for it, they will place other ‘olfactory enrichment’ in our enclosures. This will apparently consist of completely novel scents called ‘catnip’, ‘Valery’ and ‘sin-a-mom’. No idea who Valery is. Maybe a new keeper? Anyway, I can’t help but looking forward to it! But in the meantime, it’s best if I make sure that the tyre isn’t hiding any food from me again.

Profile: Maree is a 4-year-old wildcat part of the Aigas Wildcat Breeding Programme. She has an active and inquisitive personality, proving the best wildcat to trial new enrichments with. She is also incredibly intelligent, allowing her to both easily solve the puzzles we pose her and be an absolute nightmare to catch before veterinary checks.

Want to help us looking after Maree and the other resident wildcats? You can adopt a wildcat on the Aigas Field Centre website and make a donation to the Breeding Programme.  

words & photos of enrichment by Maria Giulia Checchi, wildcat photos by Jacob New