Jungle cats and agit prop...

This morning I got an e-mail from Darren Naish thanking us for having published a peice relating to his discussion about a new Indian mystery cat yesterday. We were happy to do so, because Darren is one of the good guys in a field filled with self-styled pundits, and always has something interesting to say. We were also impressed by his horribly Suessian pun the "Cat in the Ghat"

So in the spirit of the late great Doctor S, (and throwing down the gauntless to Darren, challenging him to somehow get `green eggs and ham` into a Tetzoo posting in the next week)

"And NOW comes an act of Enormous Enormance!
No former performer's performed this performance!
but Darren's surpassed himself better than that
by pulling another cat out of his hat"

OK, what he actually did was to visit the museum in Winchester where, amongst other things, he photographed the semi-legendary Hayling Island jungle cat.

However, he also wrote something which struck a deeper chord with me than anything else he has written in the past fifteen years of our friendship:

I took Will (my 7-year-old) along, and he loved it, spending literally hours looking through drawers of pinned insects and at stuffed things in cases. I see every indication that kids are naturally fascinated by animals and other living things: it's just that this interest is often not switched on at the right moment, nor is it nurtured or encouraged.

That is exactly what I have been saying for years, and it is exactly what I said in this article which was published today in the Western Daily Press...