Tigers or just fat cats?
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Was the recent sighting of a large feline in Paris a tiger or merely an overweight and overgrown puss?
PEOPLE IN Thailand must have been amused by the news last week that a tiger was running loose near Disneyland Paris.
The photo taken by one of the first people to spot the animal looks unclear to me, but nevertheless, people who saw the photo or the animal itself insisted that it was indeed a tiger.
Police, firemen, animal rescuers and lots of members of the public began searching the area. Everyone wanted to see this wild animal wandering around Paris.
Zoos were checked, people keeping wild animals in their homes were questioned, but no one could find out where the mystery tiger had come from.
In fact, no one could find the tiger itself.
For sure, tigers don’t live naturally in the wild in Europe, but the area has its other species of cats, such as the European wildcat. Once found throughout the continent, by the mid-1900s, its numbers had been reduced through hunting. In some areas, such as the Netherlands and Austria, it was thought to be extinct.
You can imagine the surprise of the Dutch when in 2006, a wildcat was photographed by a camera trap. Then, a controversy started. Was it really a wildcat, or simply a very big housecat?
Wildcats are slightly larger than housecats, and to people with no experience with wildcats, it would simply look like a very fat tabby.
Nevertheless, with other sightings, it was confirmed that the Netherlands does indeed have a colony of wildcats, but the colony will not last very long.
Because it breeds very easily with domestic cats, many of the European wildcats may not be “pure”. In Scotland, people have been working very hard to protect their own colony of wildcats, neutering all hybrids as well as housecats in areas where the wildcats are found.
Wildcats are very shy, avoiding humans if possible, but the lure of fresh chicken might tempt them to come close to human dwellings. The media occasionally reports sightings of “monster cats”, with photos too, the same situation as the tiger of Paris.
Before some of my readers were born, Bangkok itself once had reports of a panther running around the jungles of Makkasan, when Makkasan was covered with jungle growth. After some pet dogs disappeared, the public demanded action from the police.
Wildlife officials searched the area where the panther had been seen. They even found pawprints, prompting the media to name the cat “Paws”.
Paws was eventually caught and set free in Khao Yai. At least, that’s what wildlife officials said. Years later, one of the officials admitted that Paws was never caught. He even doubted that a panther had been wandering around Makkasan, the pawprints being closer in size to a very big housecat.
To reassure the public, the officials released the panther, which came (I think) from Dusit Zoo and was scheduled for release anyway.
Back in Paris, within a day, doubts were raised that the tiger was really a tiger. Some people began thinking it might be a lynx, another kind of wild cat that had become extinct in France but was reintroduced over 40 years ago. The lynx sanctuary, however, is 350 kms away.
In the end, officials decided that the Paris tiger, just like Paws, was simply a really fat cat.
Might Bangkok ever be visited by a real panther? I doubt it – unless a member of a private zoo escapes from its enclosure. These beautiful animals, just like the lynx and the wildcats, were once the owners of vast areas of what are now countries. Now they’ve been cut down by progress and a bunch of rifles.
Our wildlife heritage seems to have been transformed from an elegant, graceful animal into a really fat cat.
