Cats – by someone less well known than T.S. Eliot

One of the 20th century’s great English poets, A.S.J. Tessimond’s work was rediscovered in the 1970s and has since received great acclaim.

This is an ex-tiger!

Monty Python’s 1969 “Dead Parrot Sketch” is a classic, but it has tragic overtones.

Tiger, tiger…

At the beginning of the 19th century there were 40,000 tigers in the world. Today, around 4,000 are left in the wild, more than half of them in India.

The Iberian lynx: Prehistoric feline grace

Until recently the survival of the Iberian lynx, one of the world’s rarest wildcats, was in doubt. But conservation efforts are finally paying off.

Snow leopard: A close encounter of the rarest kind

Getting up close and almost personal with one of the world’s most beautiful and inscrutable big cats.

Nothing nebulous about protecting the clouded leopard

Clouded leopards live in the forests of Southeast Asia. The smallest of the big cats, their fur is dappled with dark, cloud-shaped markings ideal for camouflage.

The privilege of making friends with a cheetah

The cheetah, that most elegant of large cats, is synonymous with speed and feline grace. Sadly, only about 12,400 remain in the wild. Of 25 African countries where they can be found, Namibia has the most, with about 2,500. And in Iran only about 60 critically endangered Asiatic cheetahs are believed to survive.