A Gordon's wild cat kitten at play on the trunk of a palm

Wild About Cats
Life with Arabia's endangered felines
by Marijcke Jongbloed

"If anyone had told me before I came to live in Arabia that I would not only find cats - wild cats - in this most challenging of environments, but that they would literally take over my life, I'd have thought them mad. But fifteen years on, that's just about what has happened."

So begins the fascinating story of Marijcke Jongbloed's life with the endangered felines of Arabia. The "cat lady", as she became known among colleagues in the United Arab Emirates, found herself involved in championing the cause of increasingly threatened and misunderstood wild creatures, ultimately spearheading the establishment of the Arabian Leopard Trust. In Wild About Cats, she shares the joys and sorrows of her work with characters like Calamity Jane the one-eyed Gordon's wild cat, Malika the fun-loving caracal, and Arnold the Arabian leopard resuced from a life of misery in a Yemen souq.

Wild About Cats was first published in 1998 by Barkers Trident Communications and is distributed by Zodiac Publishing FZ LLC.

About the Author

While practicing medicine as a family doctor, Marijcke Jongbloed studied the desert flora and fauna of Arabia as a hobby. Her weekly forays into wadis and dunes were recorded in a local newspaper column and formed the basis of two books on desert ecology (The Living Desert and Green Guide to the Emirates). Concern about the unprotected status of wild animals in the region made her a champion of wildlife conservation. She was founding chairman of the Arabian Leopard Trust (ALT), the first and only non-government organisation that aimed at raising public awareness, breeding endangered species in captivity and working towards the creation of nature reserves. In 1995 she changed career after twenty-five years as a doctor to be involved full-time as manager of the Sharjah Desert Park - a great privilege and a change she considers herself fortunate to have made. Her work for the environment in the UAE was recognised in 1996 when she received the Sheikh Mubarak Award for Natural History. She is continuously fascinated by the plants and animals which are co-inhabitants of our planet and likes to share this fascination with anyone who cares to listen.

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