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When I lived in Jersey I had the rare honour of looking after a litter of Serval
kittens - my first introduction to "wild looking" spotted cats at
close quarters.
A litter of three had been born in Jersey Zoo in 1978, but the Serval mother had
injured previous kittens by over-zealous grooming, so the Zoo decided that it
would be safer to find a foster mother.
My Blue Burmese queen, Champion Bambino Alice Bluegown, already the mother of
four champions, took on the litter and reared all three of them successfully.
The kittens were returned to the Zoo where one of them, named Alice after her
foster-mother, later had triplets herself.
Due to her domestic upbringing, Alice was gentle and trusting which made her
relatively easy to handle. She lived to nearly seventeen years old, a good long
life for a breeding female Serval.
Servals, of course, are wild cats which cannot be kept as domestic pets after
kittenhood, but I had the rare privilege of living with them, if only for a
short while.
I found the nearest thing to them - a "wild looking" spotted cat
with true domestic cat temperament - when Bengals were imported into the UK.
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| KITTENS | KITTENS |