Wild About Cats

Jack Couffer has a thing for cats--make that the feral cats of an exotic African island.

They’re the cats of Lamu, an archipelago off the coast of Kenya. And their distinctive traits resemble those of the sacred felines of ancient Egypt.

Couffer, a veteran Hollywood filmmaker who lives in Corona del Mar, has spent four years observing and photographing the cats that he believes may be descendants of the wild African cats that were domesticated by the Egyptians some 5,000 years ago.

The result of his study is “The Cats of Lamu” (The Lyons Press; $24.95), which Atlantic Monthly calls a “charmingly written” account in which “Couffer describes with a mixture of precision and sly humor--territories, social ranks, protocol, family connections, and communication systems among his cats.”

Famed primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall, a friend of Couffer’s, calls it “more than a book about cats--it brings to life a little known corner of Africa, with its age-old way of life and the fascinating relationship between the people and the cats themselves.”

For Couffer, who has a home on Lamu, “it’s a story of an American expatriate’s life in a faraway, exotic place, really. Cats are an important part of the book, but other aspects of it seems to interest people as much as the cats.”

Couffer, 73, who studied biology at USC before earning a degree in cinema arts in 1950, discovered the cats on his first trip to Lamu in 1972 during a break in directing “Living Free,” the sequel to the popular film “Born Free.”

The 8-mile-long, 3-mile-wide island hooked Couffer immediately.

“It seemed like that idyllic place you dream about: palm trees and white sands and blue skies and coral reefs and good fishing and friendly people.” And, he added, “interesting cats.”

An estimated 3,000 feral cats live in the town of Lamu, which has a population of about 8,000 and is about the size of Catalina Island’s Avalon. Couffer noticed the cats immediately, “not only because there were so many of them, but because of their extraordinary look. I thought, ‘These cats look like Egyptian sculptures.’ ”

Lamu town,which was founded 1,000 years ago, was once a major port on the East Coast of Africa.

Couffer speculates that the cats originally may have been ships’ cats or they were brought to Lamu as “curiosities” by traders.

“They had trade there to India and China,” he said. “We know all this from archeological evidence, and there were cat bones found in the first occupation a thousand years ago. They also had trade up the Red Sea to Egypt.”

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While there were many sacred animals in ancient Egypt, the cat was special. “Bastet was the cat goddess, the goddess of motherhood and fertility,” Couffer noted, adding that nearly all Egyptian households had a cat at the peak of the cult of Bastet.

“That’s when the domestic cat began to evolve into the animal that it is today,” he said. “It was taken from the wild and bred to where it no longer resembled a wild animal at all. The wild cat it came from looked like what today you’d see as your sort of generic cat: a gray tabby with short legs and short fur.

“That’s the African wild cat that still lives in the wild today. The Egyptians took that animal, and through selective breeding, made it into what is the classic Egyptian-looking cat, which has long legs, a long, slim body, a long whip tail, short fur, a long neck and a small head.”

That cat “doesn’t occur in Egypt anymore,” Couffer said. “It doesn’t occur anywhere really anymore except on Lamu.”

Couffer and his longtime companion, Sieuwke Bisleti--a lion expert he met while shooting “Living Free” in Kenya--have a home in Shela, a fishing village three miles from Lamu town. Shela has a population of about 1,000 people and about 100 feral cats.

Couffer, who had long observed the cats, decided about four years ago to do a book about them. In the process, he observed a fascinating relationship between the cats and the local people: “Nobody owns a cat, but there are cats in nearly every house. They come and go and the people provide for them--not because they set out to feed the cats so much, but it’s an easy way to dispose of your kitchen waste and so forth.”

Fishermen, he said, also throw fish guts and fish heads to the cats on the beach rather than tossing them into the ocean.

“The cats help to keep the town clean, and obviously they keep the mice and rats down, which are a threat in any community like that that’s very close and has trade.”

For his study, Couffer chose to focus on a group of about 15 cats that lives near his home in Shala, all of whom he has given names such as Simba, Liza, Katja and Matjam.

“The most interesting thing was this living in social groups that have very defined territories, and in our village of Shela there were roughly 10 of these social groups that I compare to lion prides,” he said. “The social groups behave just exactly like lion prides do in most respects.” Couffer said breeders have created new varieties of cats, “some of which now have the same confirmation as an Egyptian cat, but these are bred as show cats for cat shows and for pets. There’s no sort of native population of [Egyptian cats] anymore; they’re genetically isolated on this island and have been for a thousand years, so far as I know.”

“The Cats of Lamu” is Couffer’s 11th book. Among his previous works are “Song of Wild Laughter” (Simon and Schuster; 1963), about his experiences filming Disney wildlife films; and a series of four natural history-travel books he wrote with his son, Mike, for Putnam beginning in 1975 with “Galapagos Summer.” (Mike Couffer, 35, a Corona del Mar environmental consultant and endangered-species specialist, also shot some of the pictures in “The Cats of Lamu.”)

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Couffer’s most unusual book is one published by the University of Texas Press in 1992: “Bat Bomb: World War II’s Other Secret Weapon.”

“It’s a story about a secret project during World War II where--don’t laugh--bats were to be used as carriers of incendiary bombs” over Japan’s industrial areas.

It makes sense, at least after Couffer, who was involved with the Army Air Corps’ Project X-Ray, explains it.

Bats, he said, seek secretive places to hide during the day such as attics, which are highly flammable. They can carry their own weight in flight and they hibernate.

The question was whether the bats could be loaded with a tiny, time-controlled incendiary bomb attached to their skin--then released at night over Japan, where they would fly into secretive places where the device would blow up.

“Our assignment was to prove or disapprove its feasibility,” said Couffer. “Actually, we proved it was feasible.”

Their bat plan, however, was never called into play “because there was another secret project that was much more effective” in ending the war with Japan--the atomic bomb.

Couffer, whose film credits include working as second-unit director on “Out of Africa,” has no intention of retiring.

“I don’t play golf, so I’m still working because I’ve got the kind of specialty I do, dealing with animals in films primarily. People still call once in a while.”

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Couffer and Bisleti divide their time between Corona del Mar, their home in Lamu and another home “up country” in Naivasha, Kenya. Their house there is on a lake in a bird and wildlife sanctuary, “with hippos and giraffes in the garden and all kinds of buck,” he said.

Couffer and Bisleti plan to return in the fall to Kenya, where Couffer will catch up on the cats of Lamu.

“I’ve got a lot of friends among the cats, and I have to check them out and do what I can if any of them are having any problems,” he said.

The couple apparently get their fill of cats on Lamu. At home in Corona del Mar, they have a Jack Russell terrier, Piglet, who accompanies them on their travels.