Wildcat Haven - Tapa dura

Some seven years after abandoning the life of an international journalist for a life in the wilds - first on the track of grizzly bears and cougars in Canada and then in a remote lochside cottage in the Scottish Highlands - Mike Tomkies began a remarkable experiment, rearing the most ferocious animals to roam wild in Britain. The true wildcat is rare and only to be found in inaccessible corners of the Scottish mountains. It may look like a giant domestic tabby, but with its bright red tongue and its vicious claws an inch and a half long, it is a formidable and fearless opponent of mankind. It is justly noted for being untamable. To begin with, Mike became the custodian of two little spitfire kittens, found abandoned ina ditch when only a few weeks old. Even before they were fully weaned in his kitchen, they could only be approached with extreme care, usually with thick gauntlets as protection against the ravages of tooth and claw. He names them Cleo and Patra, and built them a sturdy natural pen between his cottage and the west wood. The kittens were only seven months old when a spitting and snarling tomcat arrived from the London Zoo to change all their lives. Mike resolved to breed a wildcat family and prepare them for a return to the wild. In the years that followed, little of the scant scientific theory on wildcat behavior was borne out by his careful observations. Mike's extraordinary adventures in raising and releasing no fewer than three litters, two pure wildcat and one a hybrid from a domestic male gone wild, are full of incident, at time hilarious, and deeply moving. The runt of Cleo's second litter demolished Mike's last defences by giving him her total trust and affection while retaining an utterly wild and independent nature. This unique story of communion between man and animal is taken from two books that have long been out of print - My Wilderness Wildcats and Liane, A Cat from the Wild - here revised and updated by the author, and illustrated with many new photographs, all in colour.

Mike Tomkies is 'Mowgli and Robinson Crusoe and Konrad Lorenz all rolled into one, a field naturalist of exceptional perception and practical knowledge,' wrote J.N.P. Watson in Country Life. He gave up his life as a journalist in Hollywood to study grizzly bear and cougar in Canada, later settling in remote lochside cottage in the Western Highlands, where he wrote Golden Eagle Years, On Wing and Wild Water, and Out of the Wild. His book A Last Wild Place - about the whole cycle of nature in his 300 square miles of trackless Scottish hillside - was commended by the Duke of Edinburgh and became a bestseller.