On the Highland Titles website on a page about Scottish wildcats they make the following claim. "Highland Titles have built and operate perhaps the finest wildcat rehabilitation facility in Europe.
We have staff and premises to deal with both injured wildcats and abandoned kittens."
You'd think that such an illustrious facility with such expertise would have little difficulty in correctly sexing cats, wouldn't you? Apparently they do. This is an extract of an email sent from Highland Titles to Graeme Taylor of Scottish Natural Heritage and Dr Roo Campbell of Scottish Wildcat Action.
We have staff and premises to deal with both injured wildcats and abandoned kittens."
You'd think that such an illustrious facility with such expertise would have little difficulty in correctly sexing cats, wouldn't you? Apparently they do. This is an extract of an email sent from Highland Titles to Graeme Taylor of Scottish Natural Heritage and Dr Roo Campbell of Scottish Wildcat Action.
This cat had been in the enclosure on their premises for over a year at this point. What kind of facility which claims to rehabilitate and deal with injured wildcats is not even competent in determining what sex they are?
It also becomes apparent that because of the failure to correctly sex these cats, Highland Titles themselves consider one of the enclosures they built was unnecessary. That was built using money from their customers and it would seem has been wasted.
While we are here, we might also ask the question, so how many Scottish wildcats has this facility rehabilitated and released? The answer to that is, none, not one. The only animal ever in their possession which may possibly have been pure enough to be determined a Scottish wildcat, escaped from their care before it's identity could be determined by examination under sedation or genetic testing. This is the "wildcat" Highland Titles claim to have released. In our version of English, "escaped" and "released" have distinctly different meaning, and are not interchangeable.
This is an email form Dr Roo Campbell to Highland Titles after being informed the potential wildcat had gone missing.
"The cat in that enclosure was potentially a wildcat based on the videos you sent (though we’d have wanted to have it inspected more closely under sedation as it might not be)"
The "perhaps the finest" claim seems to be, as is so often the case with Highland Titles, more than a bit of an exaggeration. We wouldn't call a facility which can't correctly sex the animals in it's care, and where the only animal in it's care which potentially may have been a Scottish wildcat escaped before proper identification while claiming it is definitely a wildcat and they released it, "perhaps the finest", would you?
