New Big Cats, New Little Cats

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who works at the base camp of our long-term research project in Mongolia. These are his adventures…

It’s been a while since my last post, and a lot has happened in camp. I had some very busy days with the German film crew, and I think that they got some good material. The Germans had hired a driver, a cook, and a translator from a tourist company, Nomadic Journeys, who helped with the work. I had no idea that it was possible to cook such good food in such a remote place as our camp. I considered capturing the cook to keep him in camp when the others left, but I gave up on the idea when I realized that we don’t have the ingredients required to cook the stuff he did…

Three days before the Germans left, we caught up with Aztai. The batteries in his old collar would have depleted in a month or two, so it was great to change it for a new collar. We have been following him more or less constantly since August 2008, and hopefully we can follow him for one more year now. He must be the world’s most well studied snow leopard. Two Swedish professors that develop a teaching material on biodiversity and nature conservation for Mongolian schools had arrived in camp eight hours before we replaced Aztai’s collar. That’s a new camp record for fastest sighting of a snow leopard.

Friday [the camp’s little kitty] gave birth to three kittens one afternoon. She was restless in the morning so I made a nice box for her, insulated with spare clothes, a roof and a small entrance. Friday glanced at it and went for my winter sleeping bag instead, she is a clever girl and knows exactly where the warmest place in the ger is. Now, I need my sleeping bag and didn’t want her to mess it up, so I hung it from the ceiling and went out into the mountains. When I came back, the sleeping bag was on the bed with a little cat family in it. At night, she insisted that I should help keep the kittens warm and she tried to put them in the sleeping bag with me. In the end I gave up and started using my summer sleeping bag, and she doesn’t like that – not warm enough. So she accepted the box instead. I am freezing in my thin sleeping bag, and the cats are happy and warm. They provide a lot of joy out here; it adds a lot to our lives to have a little cat family in camp, so I reckon that I have to accept being a little cold.

But back to business. Most of the snow is gone and I think the snow leopards Have changed their travel routes a little. We have found new scrapes and fresh urine on existing scrapes, but, in general, it seemed as if the snow leopards were able to avoid us. Very irritating. Something had to be done. After eight day of experimenting and calculating, we were able to collar a new male. At the moment he is known as M8. I think that he is one of Supermom’s previous cubs, but I’m not sure yet. He weighed 34 kg and will probably be two years old in May-June. After placing the collar, M8 showed me his teeth and growled. Pretty tough little guy. Given his behavior I wouldn’t be surprised if Tsagaan is his dad.