Many years ago I wondered what it would be like owning a pet – not a human one. And I found out, when I had my first cat, and now my second. But, apart from a certain inherent empathy with felines that most women are said to have and I seem to have accumulated in spades, a series on cats on BBC television kept me entertained way past my then-bedtime for days on end, even though the final episode showing weird species rather put me off. All in all, it decided me: a cat was to be had. More, it showed me the charms of animals filmed, from tigers to snakes, though underwater shots sort of got me rather bilious and made me want to change to the most mundane of silly soap serials. Which, at the time, were not on my must-watch list.
From then on, it was a short step to Animal Planet, once it arrived in India. At first, it was all about a veterinary hospital in the UK and how animals were saved and lost and everyone cried either which way. Then it moved on to funny things that animals do, which suddenly vanished off its evening slot to reappear goodness knows when. Then it was two docu-films, that have been played so often that even our kitten at home has stopped looking up when the big cats on screen make familiar sounds.
The first is a film on two tiger cubs that are sent to a rescue centre in midwest America and grow up, on camera the whole time, to become fearsomely large, albeit still cuddle striped beasts. As they stagger around the house – sort of like our own little tiger cub – they are furry, funny, fabulous little animals that make you smile and worry. As they grow, and start eating vast amounts of very bloody meat, their baby-faced appeal reduces somewhat, though they continue to be fabulously desirable and magnificently beautiful. And, once grown, they are to be admired, watched, but not rough-housed with.
The other is a story of tigers being tended at a monastery in the Far East. Brought up in the company of monks and a few lay brothers, the big cats learn how to coexist with man, even as they are taught to get along with each other peaceably. It is indeed amazing to watch the enormous and glossy, healthy, well fed animals play like kittens with the head of the monastery and his acolytes, rolling in the sand, playing hide and seek among the rocks and splashing in the water like playful domestic pets rather than the fierce carnivores they actually are.
Many of the wildlife shows on television, be they Animal Planet, Discovery or National Geographic branded products, are wonderfully filmed and immensely interesting. And with each comes a different personality, the host or one of them, at least. ‘Crocodile Hunter’ Steve Irwin was probably, for me, the most intrepid, but the most irritating, annoying the big reptiles and being so high-energy and excited that it left no room for the wonder and awe that the animal kingdom tells tales of. And now the poor man is dead, killed by one of the animals he was so passionate about. He went as he lived, in the company of animals. He will be missed, even if I, for one, rarely watched him.
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