Kate & Lisa
Early in 1986 I started thinking about foxes again. I really wanted to hand raise an orphaned fox from a very early age, a vixen if I could locate one. I contacted Dr Stephen Harris again and a few weeks later he called to say that he had not one but two vixens that needed a home, sisters about four weeks old. The following day I travelled to Bristol and came back to Andover with two chocolate-brown bundles of fluffy fur that I named Kate and Lisa. Kate for my goddaughter and Lisa as a variation of the Russian word for fox, leesa.
Kate and Lisa lived in the house in Andover for the first few weeks. We had a spare bedroom that I'd been using as a photographic darkroom for several years and that now became the fox room. It didn't take long to train the foxes to use a cat litter tray but their desire to scratch and dig meant that the carpet in the room didn't fare well. As the days progressed the carpet diminished in size and the area of exposed floor board became bigger.
As with Heidi, I took Kate and Lisa to London at weekends. There was a cement based conservatory area where they could sleep at night so the furnishings at the flat sustained little damage as long as the foxes were supervised while in the living areas. Kate and Lisa didn't like strangers and if we ever had friends visit, at the first ring of the door bell Lisa would retreat beneath a sofa and Kate would climb inside the fireplace in the bedroom and lie on the smoke shelf in the chimney. We wouldn't see or hear any sign of either of them until the guests had left.
As the foxes got older and more independent my father and I each took one on as our own. Kate became my fox as she was the most confident of the two and I wanted to use her as a filming fox. One of the producers I'd worked with on The Living Isles had come up with an idea for a childrens programme about field voles, a kind of animal soap opera with the characters being voiced by well known British actors and actresses. I'd had great success getting field voles to behave naturally and raise families under studio conditions in realistic sets on The Living Isles so he asked me to film the programme during the summer of 1986. Micro the Field Vole told the story of a day in the life of a family of voles living on the edge of a hay meadow in the south of England. They meet and chat with snails, spiders and hedgehogs, have close shaves with an owl, kestrel, fox, and tractor, and Micro gets temporarily captured in a study trap set by Dr Stephen Harris. The voles were voiced by Richard Briers, Susan Hampshire and Liza Goddard. Kate, as the fox, was voiced by actress Glynis Brooks.
In this, her first and only film role, Kate performed perfectly. As with Heidi, Philip and I erected an enclosure around a section of hedgerow and meadow and Kate was filmed as she hunted, found, and supposedly tried to dig Micro from his burrow.
In the early autumn I noticed that Kate was getting breathless on walks. My vet in Andover found she had a build up of fluid in her lungs due to early stage heart failure. The fluid was drained and for the next few weeks she took the diuretic drug Furosemide to reduce further fluid build up. Fluid was drained again about a month later and I got increasingly concerned for my girl as the procedure was both stressful and painful. During the final week of October I took Kate to London to spend a few days at the Hornsey flat. She'd been looking brighter for several days and would have a larger garden to wander around. The day before Halloween, after eating one of the day old chicks that were a staple of the foxes diet, she started showing distress and I thought she might be choking on a bone. I took her to the vet we used in London and he took her in for emergency surgery. What neither I nor both of our vets were aware of was that Kate had a genetic blood clotting disorder, a form of haemophilia, and she died of blood loss during the surgery. We buried her in the garden in Hornsey. So sad, and just eight months old.
Lisa remained fit and healthy for the next two years but she was never as confident or outgoing as Kate and I didn't use her for filming. She was more my Dad's fox than mine anyway.
Then, in early 1988, my father suddenly passed away. He'd always looked after the menagerie of animals I had acquired, including barn owls, a kestrel, a magpie, a dormouse and some ferrets, while I was working abroad, and there was no one else who I could entrust with Lisa.
Lisa still had that independent streak that I thought would allow her to survive in the wild, so after some consultation with the RSPCA, I took her down to their wildlife centre in West Hatch Somerset in the summer of 1988. The RSPCA had a programme for rehabilitating foxes back to the wild and were sure she'd be an ideal candidate. I released her into one of the large rehabilitation enclosures and watched for the last time as she vanished into the undergrowth.
As with Heidi, I took Kate and Lisa to London at weekends. There was a cement based conservatory area where they could sleep at night so the furnishings at the flat sustained little damage as long as the foxes were supervised while in the living areas. Kate and Lisa didn't like strangers and if we ever had friends visit, at the first ring of the door bell Lisa would retreat beneath a sofa and Kate would climb inside the fireplace in the bedroom and lie on the smoke shelf in the chimney. We wouldn't see or hear any sign of either of them until the guests had left.
As the foxes got older and more independent my father and I each took one on as our own. Kate became my fox as she was the most confident of the two and I wanted to use her as a filming fox. One of the producers I'd worked with on The Living Isles had come up with an idea for a childrens programme about field voles, a kind of animal soap opera with the characters being voiced by well known British actors and actresses. I'd had great success getting field voles to behave naturally and raise families under studio conditions in realistic sets on The Living Isles so he asked me to film the programme during the summer of 1986. Micro the Field Vole told the story of a day in the life of a family of voles living on the edge of a hay meadow in the south of England. They meet and chat with snails, spiders and hedgehogs, have close shaves with an owl, kestrel, fox, and tractor, and Micro gets temporarily captured in a study trap set by Dr Stephen Harris. The voles were voiced by Richard Briers, Susan Hampshire and Liza Goddard. Kate, as the fox, was voiced by actress Glynis Brooks.
In this, her first and only film role, Kate performed perfectly. As with Heidi, Philip and I erected an enclosure around a section of hedgerow and meadow and Kate was filmed as she hunted, found, and supposedly tried to dig Micro from his burrow.
In the early autumn I noticed that Kate was getting breathless on walks. My vet in Andover found she had a build up of fluid in her lungs due to early stage heart failure. The fluid was drained and for the next few weeks she took the diuretic drug Furosemide to reduce further fluid build up. Fluid was drained again about a month later and I got increasingly concerned for my girl as the procedure was both stressful and painful. During the final week of October I took Kate to London to spend a few days at the Hornsey flat. She'd been looking brighter for several days and would have a larger garden to wander around. The day before Halloween, after eating one of the day old chicks that were a staple of the foxes diet, she started showing distress and I thought she might be choking on a bone. I took her to the vet we used in London and he took her in for emergency surgery. What neither I nor both of our vets were aware of was that Kate had a genetic blood clotting disorder, a form of haemophilia, and she died of blood loss during the surgery. We buried her in the garden in Hornsey. So sad, and just eight months old.
Lisa remained fit and healthy for the next two years but she was never as confident or outgoing as Kate and I didn't use her for filming. She was more my Dad's fox than mine anyway.
Then, in early 1988, my father suddenly passed away. He'd always looked after the menagerie of animals I had acquired, including barn owls, a kestrel, a magpie, a dormouse and some ferrets, while I was working abroad, and there was no one else who I could entrust with Lisa.
Lisa still had that independent streak that I thought would allow her to survive in the wild, so after some consultation with the RSPCA, I took her down to their wildlife centre in West Hatch Somerset in the summer of 1988. The RSPCA had a programme for rehabilitating foxes back to the wild and were sure she'd be an ideal candidate. I released her into one of the large rehabilitation enclosures and watched for the last time as she vanished into the undergrowth.