There Is No TRUE Scottish Wildcat

I was asked my opinion on the trapping and shooting of feral domestic cats to try to prevent breeding with "Scottish wildcats" and to keep the species pure.

Quite simply I do NOT approve of this killing. We are in the 21st century and the troglydites of science want to do what their predecessors the "naturalist sportsmen" did; kill. If these people wish to preserve the species then they are far too late. They may present their diagram of a wildcat fur pattern but the idiocy in this shows knowledge is lacking.

I am currently going through the final editing of The Red Paper 2022: Canids which has vastly expanded on what was presented in the "ground-breaking" first Red Paper: Canids (2010). That presents checkable historical accounts and documents that prove more than I ever could in 2010. After this has been published I will be editing The Red Paper: Wildcats and Ferals.

Not only has my colleague, "LM", gotten hold of two Scottish wildcats killed by the "great" naturalist and 'sportsman' John Colquhoun in the early 19th century but I have accrued a photographic library of 19th Century wildcat taxidermy from England, Scotland and Wales. Along with historical records it will prove that the English and Welsh wildcats were NOT extinct before the 1880s but continued on into the 1930s.

It will also prove that the fur colouration and pattern of wildcats varied -even in the pure bloods which were known as "The Highland Tigers" for a very good reason beyond their ferocity and size (which seems to have exceeded current wildcats) their colouration was yellow with pronounced stripes and these were depicted in paintings and illustrations and vary from the European wildcat types curently lauded as the 'true breed'. I have a photograph (sadly in black and white) of a true wildcat that shows the light colouration and pronounced stripes.

If the current generation of naturalists and zoologists have neglected their studies and just followed handed down dogma then that is on their own heads. I have no ego on proving this or that but in presenting facts and corecting the record. In the 17th and 18th century, due to felicide and bounties, it was widely accepted by knowledgeable persons of the time that the wildcat in Britain was only surviving due to interbreeding with feral domestic cats.

DNA may well be able to tell a "wildcat" from a feral but the problem is that you cannot prove that a wildcat is a pure bred. It seems almost 99% likely that it is not but has some DNA remnants from its ancestors which bred with ferals.

Publication is marked in for November 2022