Vergelee

Emdonini lodge Cat rehabilitation centre is exactly what the name says. Here they rescue cats like Caracol, Servals, African wildcats and Cheetah from other areas of Africa. Sometimes it’s because they are a nuisance killing livestock, sometimes they are injured or sometimes they may have been orphaned.
This centre will take the animals in, look after them and then give them to a private game reserve where no harm can come to them. If the animals can’t be released then they will try to breed from them away from humans and once the babies are 6-8 months old they are released back into the wild.
With our guide telling us how the centre was run and founded our first stop was the African wildcats. These 2 aren’t true African wildcats because the problem in Africa now is that people kick there domestic cats out and they breed with the true African wildcats and the resulting offspring is a wild domestic cat.
True African wildcats will always have black feet and black pads, be striped and the tips of the tail will be black.
This explains a lot about Toby Toebeans being so Olof.
Our next stop was the Servals and despite there size this one loved company and really enjoyed being with people. He wanted to come with us when we left.
Then we visited the Caracols and these were really wild hissing at each other to start off with until one of the guides went in, then they seemed happy.
We had an awesome display of how a Caracol can jump 2 metres from standing still to catch it’s prey.
Finally came the moment we had all been waiting for. The cheetahs.
The rehabilitation centre originally started off with 3 orphaned cheetah. A female and 2 males which were sterile, so when the female became old enough she was put into isolation and rehomed. But because the 2 males are sterile nobody wanted them and they have been at the reserve ever since.
We got to go in with the 2 cheetah even though they are not tame they are used to humans and it was really special experience. It wasn’t the touristy thing Ellie and I would normally do and the idiots we were with didn’t seem to understand that these are actually wild animals and even though the guides said give us your phones and we will take photos of you people were just wandering around behind the cats trying to get there own photos.
Ellie and I did manage to get a photo of us both taken by the guide, and as much as I appreciate the work these guys do in the rehabilitation, I didn’t like the tourist aspect and would rather have paid more money for a private tour to keep the animals calm and the idiots away.
From the Centre we then went for brunch back at the Boabab tree restaurant that we had breakfast at a few days ago and again had lovely food and a couple of beers before making our way back home back through Phinda game reserve.
This time the temperatures were 31°c and we didn’t see anywhere near as many animals, it was like a different park.
We arrived back at Petes just after 3pm where we had teas and coffees and chilled out on the sofas talking until 5:30pm when Pete lit a fire and then started cooking ribs for dinner.
By 8pm the ribs were cooked along with the rice and tomato and onion sauce. It was a lovely meal again and the ribs were huge with loads of meat. I had to try and squeeze 2 in but it was a real effort.
Then after dinner we sat down on the sofas for 10 minutes talking, I was completely knackered, I think the no sleep thing is catching up with me and I was grateful when Pieter said he was ready for bed too. And at 9pm we all retired for the night.Read more