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Guest writer: Dylan Henriksen

On September 2nd, 2013, Bandhu, meaning “friend” in Nepali, was born. He began his life quite small, weighing a pound and 12 ounces at 5 weeks of age. He lives at the Wild Cat Education and Conservation Fund in the heart of a redwood forest in California.

I remember the first time I laid eyes on this peculiar fishing cat. When I arrived at the compound, he was napping for a second or two, a necessity in order to recover from an hour of play. As he heard strange voices he scampered out of his carrier and hid behind a box. For a moment he managed to suppress his curiosity, but soon he faltered and peeked his head around to snatch a look at me. His eyes were glossy and arranged very close together, a useful quality for a cat who fishes most of his life. Four distinct stripes of a dark brown hue trailed down his forehead. White linings complimented his eyes both from above and below like stretched clouds on a lazy day, blending with his fluffed blotches of black and brown fading at the tips. His ears were rather small and geometric in comparison to his head. He was covered in the type of fluff that only a kitten can boast. A splash of pink and white highlighted his permanent smile, accenting his youth as his whiskers flicked this way and that. After a few moments of taking me in with his eyes, Bandhu put forward a paw, then another and another, softly resting each of his pads on the floor as he slinked towards me to investigate me in my entirety.

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Recently, I was privileged to deliver a WNPS lecture on small wild cats in Sri Lanka. A big portion of the talk was of course dedicated to my work at the Urban Fishing Cat Conservation Project, here in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

While I’ve given talks before, I was simply blown away by the interest shown by this particular audience, and I spent over an hour after the event, chatting to many people who shared my enthusiasm for protecting our fishing cats.

Something that nearly everyone asked me, both at the talk, and in the days after, is how can I help? I hope this post answers that question!

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My submission to Small Wild Cat Conservation News 2016, with a few additional titbits.

Getting people in Sri Lanka to pay attention to anything that does not involve the Sri Lankan Leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya) is definitely a challenge. Many do not find smaller mammals very interesting, which makes getting funding from local companies especially hard. However, in November 2015, I approached MAS Active Linea Intimo (MAS ­LI), a branch of MAS Holdings, which is one of the largest manufacturers of apparel in the region. Chances are, they manufacture a lot of the fancy sports wear you own! The CEO of MAS ­LI, Chelan Goonetilleke is a known wildlife enthusiast, so I tried my luck in pitching my proposal to him. While driving to the factory in the Board of Investments (BOI) zone in Biyagama, east of Colombo, I kept going over my presentation in my mind, but tried to play it cool. I had been turned down numerous times before, and Chelan had only 30 minutes to sit with me, so I knew I was not going to get a second shot at it.

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