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 Beautiful, graceful and reputedly untamable, the Scottish wild
cat is adept at avoiding it main enemy - the human. Most people are allowed only fleeting glimpses of fur in the heather unless they find the unfortunate beast caught in a snare. A
recent survey has shown that wild cats are present in nearly every county north of a line linking Glasgow and Edinburgh, although they have declined in some areas from their post war
peak. Ideal wild cat country is marginal land below 1500 feet, supporting a mixture of moorland, woods, rock outcrops, and farmland. The main prey taken is mice, voles, rabbits, hares,
and birds supplemented in winter by fish and carrion.
The wild cat is still persecuted by keepers on some Scottish estates, although in most areas it
is too rare to cause serious damage to stock of grouse, pheasant or lambs. A more insidious threat is the gradual dilution of the native strain through interbreeding with domestic cats gone
wild. During the Second World War, hundreds of domestic moggies roamed wild in Scotland, having been set loose to wander when farms were abandoned. The result was a
generation of hybrid moggies, and naturalists began to fear that there were no purebred wild cats left. Fortunately, a recent survey by the NCC has indicated that there are still a few
around, particularly in the remoter areas. Measures to protect this rare animal are controversial - the wild cat undoubtedly takes game birds and hill lambs on occasion, but
most keepers take a more liberal view of the wild cat than their predecessors and are more concerned to conserve them than kill them. |
