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MY WILDERNESS WILDCATS Mike Tomkies Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York 1978 The photographs throughout the book were taken by the Author and the picture on the jacket shows Freddy at nine-and-a-half weeks old, confident enough to give a juvenile imitation of his fierce father’s spit. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tomkies, Mike. My wilderness wildcats. 1. European wildcat—Legends and stories. 2. Natural history— Scotland. I. Title. QL795.C2T65 1978 599’.74428 Copyright © 1977 by Mike Tomkies Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 77-12879 ISBN: 0-385-13477-0 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FIRST EDITION IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA lows Arcoorer 4 Sea62ae Md bene, For Allan MacColl and Geoffrey Kinns MY WILDERNESS WILDCATS Chapter 1 As Highlander Allan MacColl walked along a lonely track eight miles from my isolated waterfront cottage, a sudden flurry in a steep-sided ditch made him look down. What he saw there as- tonished him. Spitting and hissing, two wildcat kittens had backed into a corner, their mouths open, tiny fangs bared, claws out, ready to fight for their immature lives with all the ferocity that characterizes their kind. Allan caught a glimpse, a shadow of abig catwithlongstripedbushytailslinking awaywithmorekit- tens through the undergrowth above the ditch. Peeling off his jacket, he threw it over the twospitting kits and, after a struggle, caught them. He puthis angry captives onto soft sacking in a grocery box in his van and drove them home. A few weekslater, as the last of the 570 miles from Londonslid away beneath my Land Rover, and the broad highways of the Scottish Lowlands gave way to the familiar single-track roads falling precipitously through the mountains or winding beside the wild woodedlochs, I looked forward to merging once more into the tranquillity of the remote Highland area which had then been my homefor nearly five years. Mysix-week return visit to Canada had been an extraordinary 2 MY WILDERNESS WILDCATS period. I had trekked with an Indian hunter after grazing boars and mother grizzlies with cubs—stalking close enough for photos but trying not to provoke a charge. I had also chased on foot behind a pack of trained hounds over miles of mountainouster- rain to photograph andhelp tree and radio-collar mountain lions. After managing those hard, blistering days, I wanted little more to do with the world of wild felines. When I walked into Allan MacColl’s village shop after my Jong drive to stock up with supplies for the months that lay ahead in my remote outpost halfway up a roadless, eighteen- mile, fresh water loch, I was consciousof a feeling of anticlimax. . All the excitement of the bear and cougar treks, the days with new and old friends in both Canada and London were over. Once again I had to face loneliness, and the solitude that had be- come my permanent mistress, which wasthe price I paid for the privilege of studying nature closely in all seasons in the real wilderness. It was a fine but cloudy day, with a strong southerly breeze, and at the door I paused to look to where the loch waters vanished four-and-a-half miles away in a bend among the mountains. I hoped the good weather wouldlast for I had to go twice that distance to reach home and even from the wood whereI left my boat andparked the Land Rover,I still faced a six-mile walk if it cut up too rough for a laden boat. The way led through woods with many windfalls, high ledges, rocky foreshore, several bogs and large areas of two foot high tussocks whose grassy crowns hid the treacherous gullies between them. Although I had frequently made the double trek with full pack, tired as I now was, I didn’t relish the idea of covering the route carrying eighty pounds of supplies. As I checked last items against mylist, Allan’s brother, Ian, a field officer with the Red Deer Commission, came up. We ex- changed greetings, and then he said, “By the way, Allan has found a couple of wildcat kittens. He’d probably let you have them.” With my headstill full of my exciting trip, I only ex- pressed mild interest. Wildcat kittensP I thought. What were they compared with the wildblack bears, bald eagles, cougars and grizzlies I had just MY WILDERNESS WILDCATS 3 been seeing? The wildlife of Scotland appeared humdrum in comparison. Besides, I had never liked cats. At one childhood school, while otherboys had been bitten by dogs, I'dhad the du- biousdistinction of being the only boy in the form that had been bitten by a cat. Cats had always seemed to me to be faithless creatures whose “love” for their owners was of the cupboard va- riety, who only came home for food and warmth, and whose “affection” was only given because they wanted at that particu- lar moment to have their heads tickled or to be stroked before going their own independent ways. I was more of a dog man myself, proof of which, all six feet, four-and-a-third inches nose- to-tail-tip of him, was now reposinglion-like outside the shop in the Land Rover. I had bought Cantersend Ringleader Beowulf—to give Moobli his full pedigree name—in January as an eleven-week-old pup from a top breeder in Sussex who was renownedfor herlarge, powerful, award-winning yet amiable Alsatians. Although during my first three-and-a-half years in the Scottish wilds—when Id lived in an old patched-up woodencroft on the Atlantic end of a sea island—I’d had no companion at all, when I moved to Wil- dernesse, my current home, I'd felt the need for a really good dog. Not only as a companion but also to help me track the foxes, badgers, and the roe and red deer that passed through my woods, so I could record their exact movements for my studies. Moobli was so far proving ideal. I had no wish to show him, which wasjust as wellbecause, although he had seventeen inter- national and national grand champions in his past four genera- tions, Moobli lacked one characteristic essential for a good show dog. Alsatians should havestiffly pricked-up ears but, despite my ministrations with chiropodists’ felt, one of his huge ears—four inches across the base—simply refused to stiffen. Its tip drooped forward, so when he looked at you it appeared he was waving goodbye with his right ear. But he wasgentle, astonishingly so. He suffered various sheep- dogs and tiny terriers, who felt rightly territorial, to bark and “drive” him away from the specific little areas around their homes. A good big aristocratic dog who is well brought up and sure of his place, naturally recognizes the territorial rights ofall 4 MY WILDERNESS WILDCATS otherdogs, bigorsmall, andwillputup withthis kind of behaviour withoutretaliation. But there was one snag to Moobli’s ap- parent supine toleration—he wasstill a pup, only eight months old, and already strangers who knew the breed would stop and exclaim that he was the biggest young Alsatian they had ever seen—and I felt sure that when he was mature, from three on- wards, he wouldhavehis own rigidly defined codes of behaviour as far as other dogs were concerned, but this almost certainly would not apply to cats. So, when Ian MacColl told me about the wildcat kittens, I felt Moobli andwildcats wouldnotbe awise mixtureto have around mylonelyhome. In addition, I had an enormous amount ofwork ahead. Quite apart from outdoor chores and normal wildlife treks, for which there were never enough hours in the day or night, a New York publisher had commissioned a book on my Canadian experiences, and I had to write sixteen long chapters before March. I doubted, too, that Allan’s kits could be true wildcats. I'd never heard of anyone catching even kits by hand, and I felt they were almost certainly the progeny of a domestic cat gone wild, a common occurrence in the Highlands. I drove awaywithplenty of daylightleftfor the long boat trip home, but as I was nearing the turn-off to Allan MacColl’s cottage, I suddenly felt churlish. To go straight home without even bothering to take a look at the kittens would have been down- right rude. Outside his seaside cottage, Allan, dark haired and burly, greeted me with a big affable grin. I already had much to thank him for, as it was he who had first told me about the wilderness dwelling that was now my home. As he took me to the shed wherethe kittens had theirhomein a large wooden box,hesaid, “They weretruly wild when I picked them up. If they had been any older I would have needed thick gloves.” He picked the kittens out of the box with both hands. They spat and hissed, saw me, a looming stranger, flared loudly, struggled, one bit his thumb andhelet them go. Immediately they hit the ground they scattered in opposite directions into the undergrowth, disappear- ing completely, like wisps of smoke, as if they'd never been there. MY WILDERNESS WILDCATS 5 But that one glance had told me these were not ordinary cats. They were beautiful with superbly dramatic markings—twolight tawnytigers with striped legs, bright blue eyes turning to green, and thick black-tippedtails. Allan said the wildlife park a hun- dred miles to the east would gladly have them but the problem was taking them there. He, busy with his mobile grocery van during the tourist season, had not the time. As we rounded them up, grabbing them firmly by the scruffs of their necks, so they couldn’t twist their heads roundto bite, they made an odd, loud squawking sound with wide-open mouths,rather like the noise ducks make whenstartledorseized. I was surprised for it seemed an odd coincidence that 'd heard young cougars make exactly the same noise, though louder, when first handled by man. As Allan replaced the wire mesh overtheir box, I had the feeling that I would be seeing these kit- a tens again. Nearby I saw a sleeping bag with an old mattress draped over a pile of wood chips. Allan grinned, “I slept with them the first few nights, trying to tame them little. I heard you should do that. It was a weebit of a task coaxing them to lap warm milk and eat meat atfirst. I don’t think they were quite weaned.” He scratchedhis head. “Well, I keptthem for you anyway. Butif you don’t want them wecan let them go again later.” Touched by his kindness, I thanked him and asked if I could have a good think about it. Taking on a pair of wildcats who might grow to anything between eight andsixteen pounds wasn't something to do lightly. In the pine and larch wood where I parked my Land Rover,I a heaved my boat right way up and after laying a track of branches over the rocky shore, hauled it into the water. It was a thirteen foot, six inch Norwegian style fibreglass boat with a deep keel. Although it was only four and half yearsold,it had seen some roughyears on the rocky coast of the sea island where I had first lived in the Highlands and was now heavily patched along the chines, and I only used it for rowing or to leave in the woods nearer civilization when I made myrare trips out of the wilds. My new fibreglass boat, double-hulled and semi-cabined, which was essential for long winter supply trips in gale-lashed 6 MY WILDERNESS WILDCATS waters, was at home, on its wooden runners beneath an alder tree where I had winched it high above any possiblerise in the loch level from rainstorms. Before I finished loadingup, Moobli proved there was nothing wrong with his memory. He leaped into the boat and stood in the bow, his usual place, looking at me solemnly, anxious to please. I couldn'thelp smiling. Even as apup, he’dhada sad sol- emnlook, a really alert but oddly philosophical expression which was not only endearing but went with his quiet nature, for although his bark was already deep enough to scare a cougar, he seldom used it. He was the quietest dog I’d ever known. After the first three miles and the easterly slopes of the 2,774-foot mountain had receded to our right, the stiff southerly wind forced its way down the valley before the next high saddle of hills, and sent curling waves slapping the side of the heavily laden boat, throwing high spumesofspray over us. I headed into the waves until I was abreast of Sandy Point, a forty-yard long spit of gravel that ran into the loch from the north bank, then went north-east with the waves until I reached the slight lee of a gravellybeach two miles from home. There, I throttled down the engine, drifting near the shore. Again Moobli remembered— when I did this it meant his exercise run. He put his huge paws on the side, peered in at the rising ground below the surface and, when he judged it shallow enough, leaped out with a huge splash. Then, shaking himself vigorously on shore like a small bear, he set off alongside the moving boat. Heavily built though he was, allhis fleshwas fluidmuscle and he could cover thatlast two miles, over terrain in which no man could run, in about ten minutes.Itneverfailedtothrillme, seeinghimrunlike that, hurl- ing his bodyover the deep tussocks in deep bounds like a charg- ing cougar, threading his way through the big boulders with his light tan chest, shoulders and thrusting rear legs flashing like quicksilverbetween them, or breakinginto a lopingtrot over the yielding gravel banks, his head low and vast, semi-webbed paws spread out like those of a wolf, so that he virtually drifted over places where a man would flounder. I arrived a few minutes before him and in the now-calm waters I edged the boat gently against the grassy bankbelow the