The 1999-2002 Cats Study

 I would not be the only person to state that "professional" or "academic" practices and behaviour do not apply when the person being dealt with is a "common oike" -or "natura;list" as we are known.

Back in 1999 I produced two papers -Felids; Wilcats, Ferals & Hybrids and Wolverines in the United Kingdom. Both were the culmination of many years of work with all data (as is usual in any work I produce) fully referenced and checkable by others. European museums and even UK institutions were very cooperative -they received my Felids paper and I received copies of their papers as wll as photographs. There were promises of cooperating on many aspects asnd particularly the distribution of Felis lybica in Europe. 

Then everything stopped. I assumed, initially, that field work was keeping some of the people busy. After a while it was clear something was amiss. I had been told that my research was thorough and that I had a "great knowledge on the subject matter". What had happened?

Although it cannot be proven, for that reason I will not name the culprit in the UK or the institution, a certain individual did not like tjhe attention my work was getting and had "discrete words" with some of his "European colleagues" about cooperating with me, or, rather not cooperating with me. 

Initially I refused to believe this but soon found out enough to understand that it was no mere rumour.

But then we come to the other "big problem". You see, because of the detailed work I presented it seems that certain "professionals" had assumed that I was a doctor or professor and attached to a university. This was an assumption wholly on their parts and it embarrassed them that they had heaped praise on a mere naturalist. 

That snobbery still exists today so don't think it was a thing of the past and I have written before about my experiences with "official cooperation" with universities.

Rather like with foxes the idea is to take what the naturalist finds out and use it, often without a named credit (regarding my work there are a number of such instances).

I mark papers for release after 20 years (I don't think I'll be around for the next big release!) as I take all correspondence as private. However, as you will see from the scans below this was very open correspondence. And 20 years later the lack of cooperation continues ("Citizen scientist" is mainly a term to placate the "oikes").

This is a typed document as even back in 2002 we were still using typewriters and it is also a copy of a copy!