The Catnip Tapes

I was asked to give more details about my project with the big cats at Bristol Zoo. A function of being in the right place at the right time - wanting to be a vet, being at Clifton, needing a Biology project, being on the Science Society committee, and having a Chemistry teacher who wanted to know what it was about catnip that made cats respond as they do. The teacher asked me if I wanted to be involved and I snapped up the chance.

The idea was to expose the big cats to catnip and see if they went all kitteny. I tried fresh catnip, dried catnip and catnip extract. Put it in a box mounted on a tripod and placed it as close as possible to the cage mesh then waited for the cats to come for a sniff. Had a video at the ready (this was a long time ago, I look at my little camcorder now and compare it to that thing, three separate units, camera, video recorder and battery case) to record all the behaviour.

The great thing was I could stay in the zoo after it had closed. The reason this was so great was that the leopards had just had cubs. The cubs were very shy and wouldn't come out during the day but they would come out in the evening when it was all quiet. One evening I was leaning on the plexiglass having set up the tripod when the whole thing shook with a bang. I spun around to see a cub had leapt at me and was just the other side looking bemused. I had many a pleasant evening wandering around the zoo, no-one else to disturb me, and away that everyone else was sitting down to their homework (public boarding school, two hours strictly supervised silence).

I had problems with the project, trying to get a good response was difficult. I only managed with the leopards, the tigers and lions didn't react as we hoped. The leopards were perfect though, rolling over, pawing at the air, just like overgrown domestic cats. My theory was that we overloaded the other cats, catnip can be overwhelming and I think the extract we used was too strong.