There are fundamental rules to follow when getting up close and personal with any of Africa’s “big cats”, the most important being to not get too up close and too personal.
Even Bernie Everette, an experienced field guide at the Emdoneni Lodge/Cat Rehabilitation Centre in KwaZulu-Natal, would, to some extent, agree with this advice.
But, as one of the key elements of Emdoneni is to educate visitors on the importance of caring about South Africa’s wild cat species, in particular those on the endangered list, Everette’s job is to do exactly that, especially with two of her favourite big cats, Moya and Juba, 21-month-old cheetah brothers.
Emdoneni, which has managed a cheetah project since 1994 and a serval project since 1998, is the vision of Louis and Cecillie Nel. The couple, with a team of qualified staff, run the lodge with the aim of “providing and maintaining an environmentally friendly wildlife centre”.
This includes animal care, conservation and rehabilitation.
Visitors help spread their conservation message. They range from pupils on educational tours to local and overseas guests combining chill-out time with the excitement of learning about and communing with these wild cats.
Three of us also spent a few days and nights at Emdoneni, paying our way in full. Hence this is no freebie-laden tale, where the writer feels duty-bound to say good things. Emdoneni was worth every cent.
We could not fault the accommodation, where zebra and buck wander around and the cat enclosures are a minute’s walk away. Or the attractive bar-lounge area with a big-screen TV tuned to National Geographic and like channels, or the swimming pool. Service and meals were good and the only moan we heard was a guest grumbling about the lack of TV sets in the rooms. But we were not there for TV.
In situ are caracals (African lynx), serval (increasingly threatened due to habitat loss and hunting), cheetah and other African wild cats. Everette can clue you in on them all.
Servals like to toss their prey into the air (we watched them tossing) and pluck the feathers if they catch a bird.
Bar One and Pippa are two of Emdoneni’s caracals. Caracals eat anything from birds to antelope, can kill up to 10 goats in a night “and only eat one”. Wasteful is a caracal’s second name, and they are choosy when they eat – “they like the soft anal section”.
We tried not to think about that.
The main aim of the educational centre is to care for these cats, and the stories of how they arrived at Emdoneni are varied: a pet who grew too big to manage, a newborn abandoned by its mother, an animal left injured in the wild and so on. All of them need care and rehabilitation.
The team also breeds the cats to release their offspring into their natural habitat. On the subject of abandoned baby cats, field guide Dumisane Ngcube, who started working with animals in 1994 and has been at the lodge for two years, explains the process.
“We can’t release abandoned babies straight back into the game reserve. We feed them on live bait, to train them to hunt. Then, at around eight months, if things have worked out we release them back into the wild.”
On the other side of the project are the animals that are used for educational purposes. Young cheetahs Moya and Juba, for instance, are so used to humans that they are safe enough, on leads, to be introduced to a classroom of excited schoolchildren and in-house guests who take the fascinating “walk with the animals tour”.
The aim, of course, is to demonstrate the magnificence of these animals while hammering home the message of conservation and caring for the environment.
On the second day I met Moya.
It’s difficult to put into words what it felt like to gaze into the depths of the eyes of a cheetah, while I had a hand buried in the warmth of his fur and could feel the beat of his heart.
The purring was so loud I suddenly knew what poets mean when they write about the heartbeat of Africa.
Okay, somewhere in the back of my mind was a warning that Everette gave us before we ventured into the cheetah’s spacious enclosure. Something about not running, because cheetahs are “built for speed – they will think you want to play”.
But there was Moya, gazing back at me – and he didn’t seem to be thinking it was snack time.
I can now cross cheek-to-cheek with cheetah off my “bucket list”.
If you go...
* On offer at Emdoneni are daily educational tours to all the cats on site, with a feeding during the afternoon tour. The management of the wildlife centre conforms with procedures and guidelines set by the KZN Wildlife Services.
* For big five viewing, Hluhluwe is close by. Visit in your own vehicle, in an Emdoneni vehicle with a guide, or book with the game reserve. Entry to the reserve is half-price for South African ID holders. We paid R55 each for the day.
* Emdoneni rates: dinner, bed and breakfast – single R937, double R737 each.
* E-mail: [email protected] or call 035 562 7000/082 713 3686. - Weekend Argus