Week 222 (23 - 29 November 2007)

Cathay gives birth to a cub

By midday on 23 November, Cathay started showing signs of going into labour. She was however pacing relentlessly in the outside cage, and continued to do so for almost 12 hours.

As it became dark, one could clearly see contractions taking place, yet Cathay was not pushing hard enough. By 23:30 she finally managed to push out a male tiger cub. She immediately went to him, started licking him clean and biting off the umbilical cord. After a few minutes, however she picked him up in her mouth and started pacing with him. It looked as if she was looking for a way out of the cage or for a place to hide him. It was un-seasonally cold on Friday night and the wind was icy. The cub, being warm and wet, was now dangerously exposed to these extreme weather conditions and stood a chance of dying from exposure. The decision had to be made to take the cub away.

A specially designed long handled paddle was used to remove the cub the next time Cathay put it down. The cub was immediately dried off and warmed with hot water bottles and warm towels. Twenty minutes later, Cathay discharged the placenta and afterbirth and then it was clear that there was only one cub.

For the next hour Cathay continued to sniff the ground and to search for her cub. She also called, not a deep loud roar, but rather a softer, high pitched call. Being exhausted from all the pacing and the long and difficult labour, she fell asleep and slept soundly for 2 hours. When she woke up, she again sniffed the ground but did not call again.

It was now discovered that she had chafed her paws quite badly with all the pacing, so once it was established that there was no chance of her developing mastitis, she was released into the quarantine camp. Over the next few days she started eating again and slowly but surely her paws healed and she started walking around again with ease. There are those who see sadness in her eyes, but she has not shown any other signs that she misses her cub.
The cub weighed 1,2 kg at birth and had already gained 400 grams during his first 5 days. He is strong, crawls around and vocalizes a lot, especially at feeding time.

327 spend most of his time in the breeding centre this past week, while TigerWoods and Madonna were in the 9 ha camp.