HI All

Wanted to update you all on Finlay, our beautiful rescue kitten. We are pleased to say that he is doing really well and developing nicely. He no longer needs to be bottle fed and is drinking milk on his own and eating some solids. His instincts and reactions are incredible even at this young age and he is already displaying very wild behaviour which of course bodes well. The aim is for Finlay to live a wild life and enjoy the freedom of the forests and woods he was born into. It is of course challenging to rear such a young cat without them becoming too imprinted on humans. Luckily, Finlay’s eyes were fully open when he was found so he would have spent time with his mother and siblings and so he clearly knows he is a cat. However at this age as with any very young animal, he needs warmth, careful care and the opportunity to play and develop. It is therefore inevitable that he will bond to some extent with the people caring for him. That is actually important to give him psychological security, reassurance and the confidence to explore. However we of course don’t want him to be tamed. Therefore he is only looked after by 2 people and has no exposure to others. This means he will of course trust the people looking after him but will be wary of other humans in general which is exactly what we want.

He is utterly mesmerising to watch and develop and is already a real handful. All our team have extensive experience of dealing with a  range of cats and we all agree that his behaviour is nothing like a domestic cat kitten. He is already possessive over food and he plays incredibly rough and was drawing blood at only 6 weeks old !!!! He has a presence that you can’t really explain but is fascinating to be around.

We hope you all enjoy the above video of his first drink of milk from a bowl. It is cuteness overload and you can clearly see his beautiful head and body stripes. If you have the volume on you can hear him sipping up the milk. He hasn’t looked back since.

We will post more videos of him playing and developing shortly.

If you want to support our work then you can Adopt a Wildcat as a special gift for someone this Christmas at:

https://www.wildcathaven.com/wildcat-adoption/adopt-a-scottish-wildcat

Sincere thanks

The Wildcat Haven Team