BOISE, Idaho — We're through a busy holiday shopping weekend with Black Friday and Small Business Saturday.
Now, it's time to give back and Treasure Valley residents can help the tiny but mighty sand cats.
Giving Tuesday is an initiative focused on charitable causes and giving to others. For this Giving Tuesday - or Giving Zooday - Zoo Boise is raising money to build a new home for their sand cats
Nala is one of Zoo Boise's sand cats and she is smaller than your traditional house cat. However, looks can be deceiving, especially for sand cats, one of the smallest species of cats. The felines are found in African deserts, and are fearless hunters.
"Sand cats in particular, they actually are well-known for hunting cobras out in the wild and eating them," Melissa Wade, assistant curator for Zoo Boise said. "So they can be fierce looking little things."
Nala is one of two sand cats that Zoo Boise currently has, but she's the only cat on display. Zoo Boise is looking to change that with the help of community support on Giving Tuesday.
"We're looking at renovating one of our buildings to build a brand new sand cat complex," Wade said. "So it's being able to have both of our same cats in the same area, because right now, we have to have our male off display."
Zoo Boise is looking to fundraise $100,000 to build the sand cat complex. The habitat will be near the tiger exhibit and feature an indoor, and two outdoor areas where visitors can watch the cats, which often have to live alone.
"The idea will be that they can both see each other, they can smell each other, and hear each other - but they don't have to occupy the same space," Wade said. "The other thing that's really cool with this is it allows us to rotate the cats around, so they can occupy different exhibits at different times. So it's a really fun enrichment thing too."
Zoo Boise's sand cats, Nala and Simba, were paired together as part of the Sand Cat Species Survival Plan, a conservation program aimed at maintaining a healthy and genetically diverse population of sand cats in order to increase their numbers.
The new habitat will also give the zoo space for when Simba and Nala settle down for mating season.
"When she has kittens, we can actually hold onto the kittens a little bit longer," Wade said.
Zoo Boise is looking to fundraise the $100,00 by the end of the year. If they raise enough funds, the zoo will be able to start construction on the habitat next year.
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