Week 330 ( 18th - 24th December 2009 )
Tragedy strikes Laohu Valley
Very little was seen of Cathay during the days following the birth of the cub and nothing was seen of the cub. Cathay was very restful spending most of her time in the same spot – returning to her cub after every hurried meal and spending as little time as possible away from it.
On Saturday I saw her between the trees sharpening her claws and spraying. The next moment she raced over to the fence, stood around for a short while; looked me up and down and then headed back into the bushes along the ditch to rejoin her cub.
The next day I heard Cathay calling to her cub and saw her head into a patch of long grass where she greeted the cub with a chuff and lay down very carefully. For the next five minutes I listened to her cleaning the baby.
On Tuesday evening it started to hail, big stones that fell in a white curtain. I heard a yelp from the cub and in desperation Cathay raced back to her baby – disappearing into the trees. She reappeared a while later and lay down near the trough for no longer than a minute before getting up and returning to the trees. Moments later she reappeared and wandered around restlessly.
Early on 23 December Cathay was lying near the fence and I could see no signs that the cub had been suckling and a feeling of dread settled in the pit of my stomach. Aside from this, her behaviour was not consistent with a mother and her cub (she was lying far away from the cub’s last known position for a long time and then moved into the shade; not once did she return to the trees to suckle.) Observation during the day found her lying in stretched out in the trees with no sign of the cub. In the afternoon; after we had closed Cathay into Hope’s Corner Camp with her food, Li and I went on a search for the cub. We walked up and down; peering into bushes, around clumps of grass, between leaves and under tree branches in the hopes of locating the baby. We could find nothing, nothing at all and eventually had to accept the fact that the cub was dead