Day One - Monday, October 28, 1996

I made it to Johannesburg, South Africa, yesterday. I have my laptop with me. It's so nice to be able to stay in touch to make sure that my animals at home are all okay. Currently there are tremendous lightning and thunder showers outside, like nothing I've experienced. Great flashes again and again for hours. And bone-chilling booms of thunder. I imagine all the animals and wildlife outside right now enduring this. The life-giving water holes are filling at last. It's the beginning of summer here and the rainy season. Weather's perfect, in the 80's.

I am staying with Dr. Jennifer Spencer. She's a local biologist that has studied lions and cheetahs. Her husband, Paul Guinane, works at Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute. She has recently obtained a job at Auburn University in Alabama and they will be moving to the U.S. next year. She will be continuing her research studies on immunology with the cheetah that Wild About Cats is going to be getting.

Tomorrow I am going to meet with Ann Van Dyk, Founder and Director of the De Wildt Cheetah Centre. It is looking quite good that she may sell us a cheetah, but she's highly selective and I've heard takes a long time to size someone up on whether they qualify. I will be under a lot of pressure, but I feel pretty confident. She's an animal lover just like me and concerned for their welfare, I can relate perfectly.

Speaking of De Wildt, they were the first to discover the truth about the king cheetah. Once believed to be a cheetah/leopard hybrid, it is now known that the coat pattern of a king is simply a recessive gene in normal cheetahs. In 1981 De Wildt unknowingly bred two heterozygous parents and one out of the litter of five had the splotchy markings of the king cheetah. The diagram above describes how recessive genes are carried and is posted at De Wildt. The king pattern is on the cat on the left and the normal pattern is on the right.

Today I saw a king cheetah for the first time. I went to the Pretoria Zoo and I got to meet with the head vet and go behind the scenes. Their king had gotten his hind foot stuck in a fence and broken his leg. He was in the infirmary and not a happy boy. They have the king cheetah and they did have one of the few white lions in the world, although it's not there anymore.

Wednesday and Thursday I am going to Madikwe Private Game Reserve to meet and stay with the head vet there. It's a 200 mile drive. They have lots of cheetah and wild dog there, antelope of all kinds, elephant, and black rhino (very rare). I am so looking forward to seeing these wild animals in a natural free state, in their home where they belong. I've only seen them in zoos.

Well, I'll sign off now and listen to the thunder and night sounds.

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