Wildcat found in Halifax placed at Cape Breton wildlife park
Exotic serval cat found roaming streets of Armdale neighbourhood last August
A wildcat found roaming the streets of Halifax last year has a new home at a wildlife park in Cape Breton.
The serval cat was taken in by the Department of Natural Resources last August after it was spotted in the city's Armdale neighbourhood.
The department has since placed the wildcat in the care of Two Rivers Wildlife Park in Huntington, which is about 30 kilometres south of Sydney.
Michaela Hadway, a caretaker at the park, said the animal, which has been affectionately named Loki, was extremely timid when he first arrived in October.
"He is more of an independent guy, which we totally respect here at Two Rivers," Hadway told CBC Radio's Information Morning Sydney. "But he is very sweet and growing more interested in people and our activities, and we're very happy to have him."
Serval cats are native to grasslands, open forests and marshes in sub-Saharan Africa, and they're illegal to own in Nova Scotia.
They can be recognized by their long neck and legs, large ears, and golden yellow coat with black spots and stripes. Serval cats can grow as large as a medium-sized dog.
It's not clear how Loki came to the province, but it's possible he was purchased from a breeder in Ontario — where there are no regulations on owning exotic animals — and brought to Nova Scotia to be kept as a pet. No one has come forward to claim the animal.
Hadway said Loki is happy and healthy in his new home. His favourite activities are playing with new toys, rolling in fresh bedding and scratching on his trees, she said.
"I think Loki is much happier not having physical contact with people from what I've experienced," she said. "You cannot keep these cats as pets. I think it's doing them an injustice bringing them here when they are meant to be living their lives in Africa."
Shouldn't be kept as pets, expert says
While servals can be kept as pets in several Canadian provinces, there are no accredited sanctuaries for the animals in the country.
This has become apparent to Tammy Thies, the founder of the Wildcat Sanctuary in Sandstone, Minn.
She said sanctuaries in the United States have been overrun with servals, including many coming from Canada, something experts are calling the "small exotic cat crisis." She said it's been exacerbated by social media and people exploiting the exotic animals for content.
"We get more calls on African servals than any other species combined. We could place a serval a week from the calls we're receiving, and we just can't keep up anymore," Thies told Information Morning.
Thies said most of the calls her sanctuary gets are from animal lovers looking to surrender their pet serval because they can't properly care for them. She said the animals can have health issues or become aggressive, which makes them difficult to care for.
"They find a breeder, the breeder tells them it's the look of the wild, but the personality of a domestic cat. And that's really not true," she said.
"The breeders are out there to make money and to sell these animals, but it's often very devastating for the owner that has them and the cat themselves because it's not working out the way they had envisioned."
Thies advises animal lovers to keep wild animals in their hearts, not their homes.
Loki's future
Hadway said the Department of Natural Resources chose the wildlife park as Loki's new home because it's the only place capable of housing and caring for serval cats in the province.
She stressed that these animals are not meant to be pets.
"They are beautiful creatures and we're thankful to have him here, but they do not belong here. They belong in their native habitats in Africa or wherever that may be, and I think it's up to us to not support the transfer of these animals here."
Hadway said the park's next step is to build a heated enclosure for Loki that has indoor and outdoor access to get him through Cape Breton's cold winters.
Proceeds from a fundraiser hosted by the Island Veterinary Hospital in Marion Bridge, N.S., at the end of the month will go toward that expense, she said.
She said she's hopeful Loki will be in his new enclosure by the spring.
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With files from Emily Conohan
