Prince of Cats

The leopard is one of the most beautiful Great Cats in creation, and is now endangered in many countries. This fact led Arjan Singh, the celebrated Indian wildlife expert, to attempt a daring experiment: rear a leopard cub in his house and return it to the jungle. The story of how Arjan Singh taught Prince and then the twins Juliette and Harriet the ways of the forest is enthralling from start to finish. Sharing his whole life with them, building them machans (tree platforms), walking the jungle tracks in their company, encouraging them to hunt, teaching them to disembowel their kills, he came to know the ways and character of the leopard as no man has before. His first great success came when Prince at last took to the jungle, fully re-habilitated. There were setbacks, it is true. Prince and Harriet each killed one human child, and the author's local critics were vociferous in their opposition. Yet Arjan Singh was supported by Mrs Indira Ghandi, then Prime Minister of India, and in 1976 he was awarded the World Wildlife Fund's Gold Medal for his conservation work. Not only did the author succeed in returning a hand-reared predator to the forest, he also scotched the fallacy that leopards are treacherous and unpredictable. On the contrary, he demonstrated the 'essential tranquility' of the leopard's temperament, and showed that it is only the animal's intelligence, combined with its capacity for effective retaliation when cornered which has given it a bad name. Although Arjan Singh achieved his aim, this inevitably meant the painful separation from these magnificent creatures he came to know and love so well.Singh, Arjan is the author of 'Prince of Cats' with ISBN 9780195654028 and ISBN 0195654021.