My Highland Kellas Cats

by Di Francis (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $43.04

  Farmers on the fringe of Exmoor suddenly began losing their sheep at an alarming rate in the spring of 1983, and set up patrols to catch the predator. Yet, savaged and half-eaten corpses were left on the hills night after night with no clue as to the killer's identity, other than fleeting glimpses of a strange black panther. The police called in the commandos. Di Francis joined the hunt in search of new evidence of the catlike creatures that have been sighted around England and Scotland - with possibly one human victim. While the panther eludes her, the trail has led to a ferocious pair of black Scottish wildcats of unknown origin. Di Francis has also written Cat Country . This book is an account of a wildlife mystery that led to the discovery of a new species of wildcat , hitherto not recognized by science.

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $6.18

  During her research into the possible existence of panther-size cats surviving throughout the British Isles, Di Francis discovered a ferocious balck 'wildcat' living in the Highlands of Scotland. At first the evidence was tantalizingly scarce - a few photographs of a mystery cat killed by a gamekeeper, a single taxidermist's specimen of an unidentified black cat killed at Kellas by the estate owner, tales told by farmers of strange, fierce black wildcats seen fleetingly in other Highland areas. The British Museum of Natural History dismissed it as a one-off hybrid, the result of a chance mating between a pure striped Scottish wildcat and a domestic feral cat. Di Francis was convinced that the animal was of scientific importance, and moved to Scotland to live in the area where the cats were said to be found. In time she persuaded scientists to investigate the origin of the mystery cats and succeeded in breeding from a pair in captivity. But the appearance of the kittens came as a complete surprise and suggested to Di Francis that she was seeing evolution in the making. Although her experiment ended in tragedy, the capture of another female Kellas promises a new family just as the world of science is becoming excited about this unique development in British Wildlife.