Yesterday we (Miriam, Robert and myself) were returning to the institute after a few days away when we saw something remarkable. I was driving. It was about 5:40 in the evening and 8 km after the park gate.

It had rained and the road was slippery. The track has improved a lot the last year but we had still switched to four-wheel-drive to make the muddy patches easier.

The light was poor. After entering the park we were keeping an eye out for elephants.

We spotted an animal crouched on the road. I thought initially it might be a jackal – we have seen jackals a few times and often find their droppings along the road. But as we got closer it was clearly a smallish reddish golden cat with a rather mangey grey patch on its back. We fumbled around looking for a camera. Luckily Robert’s camera was to hand and we passed it around to get some pictures.

The cat was eating something, holding it between its front paws. Though it turned to look at us a couple of times, showing a classical cat face, it showed no fear even though we were only 20 m away.

The cat focused on its food – a long tailed mouse of some kind. We took several pictures before driving closer. Even at only 10 meters away it calmly ignored us.

Finally, after maybe five or six minutes it had eaten everything. Without any hurry it gave a glance our way, stood up and jaunted briskly along the road away from us for about 50 m before turning into the forest down a steep heavily vegetated slope where it was quickly lost from sight.

From the size and lack of spots or other distinctive markings this is likely a wild cat Felix sylvestris – the ancestor of the domestic animals. Widely distributed but seldom seen. Indeed Robert, who has worked more than ten years in Bwindi and spends a lot of time in the forest, confesses that this was the first time he has seen the wild cat.