This morning was the first frosty morning we had down here on the Isle of Wight and the first need for the ice scrapers to come out for the frosty car windows in the morning. With the dynamic environment of the zoo, I took the camera around on the cat opening procedures in hopes of capturing this first frost in some way. I didnt really have an idea about how this might happen but I did notice that the woolen sheep's fleece's that we put in the cat enclosures for enrichment had managed to aquire a very frosted look overnight. Nothing too interesting however, but when we let Raijiv our for the morning, he came straight over to the fleece and started to roll around in it, treating the camera to a great photo! We had sprayed the fleece with a perfume fragrance (we give the cats different smells every morning) and this particular one sent him into rolling around mode!
We discovered a few months back a new enrichment toy for the cats that came about by accident really. Through trying to float some tiger food in the pond for Diamond and Aysha, we had tied two metal beer kegs (empty) together to act as buoyancy for the food. It was successful and made the cats swim out to get their meal. What we found however is the cats were more interested than the beer kegs than the food! This was because when they pulled them along the countoured ground it made all sorts of rattling and clanging noises that very much interested the cats! Especially Aysha, she was found playing with this toy for hours, and continues to enjoy recieving this toy to this day!
We had a visitor watching in the public audience one day by the name of Kieran and when one of the keepers mentioned about hoping to aquire some more beer kegs so that more cats could enjoy the idea (if we gave the beers kegs to one set of cats, you could visably see the jealousy in the rest of the cats as they watched them being pulled around). So Kieran decided he would take the challenge upon himself, along with the help of his dad, to source the zoo some more kegs for us; And indeed he did! We aquired enough kegs to make the zoo sounds like a catherdral if we gave a pair to all the cats and they decided to pull them around at the same time!
We are very grateful to Kieran and his Dad for helping the zoo out and the cats are of course very appreciative. Kieran came down to see the kegs being used with the cats and we gave a pair to Zena and Zia as well as Diamond and Aysha. The real show was watching Dimoand and Aysha trying to work out how they would approach the kegs that we had placed floating in the water. Kieran and the rest of the audience watched as the two cats contemplated swimming all the way in to get them. As the cats got nearer and nearer, tensions raised and there were a few growls along the way, but it was Aysha that finally got them in the end. She hadnt stopped playing with kegs by the time I left!
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