Pete James was a great guy with real passion for his animals, leopards and specifically the Clouded Leopard, were his particular interest at a time when very little success was being had with them outside of the Aspinall collections of course. He spent a great deal of time and effort designing the Cloudeds enclosures in order to avoid the problems of males killing females, in fact one male he had was known for this in the past. He achieved a great deal with them and his other cats, he also had a particular liking for melanistic wild cats of which he kept some, when I was kindly invited to his collection the Snow leopards had just arrived, one from Howletts. It was the one and only time I have ever had the pleasure of having a close up view of a Clouded Leopard, indeed I hand -fed it too! Which was a fantastic experience. But the collection had great potential, but sadly this developing collection was cut short, his wife tried to hold onto a few cats for a short while after Pete died but it was too much to cope with in the end. A great shame.
