Not wild – livid

I have worked with wildcats. "The supermoggy that likes to get soggy" (your report, 3 May) is an entertaining story and nothing more. Wildcats may like to fish in shallow water but they don't care to swim and certainly not to swim from Ardnamurchan, one of their most successful habitats, a mile across the open sea to Mull.

If wildcats have been reported on Mull, perhaps they have lived there for a long time. They are very secretive animals. The cat in the picture looks like a wildcat but I am concerned that it hung around for ten minutes to have its photograph taken. That is not typical wildcat behaviour.

If Steve Piper (from the Scottish Wildcat Association) hopes to take a team to Mull to investigate this sighting, he should be reminded that wildcats are protected under European and UK legislation. It is illegal to disturb a wildcat in its habitat and special licences are required to investigate any sighting.

The camera traps used by scientists in Cairngorms National Park as part of its Highland Tiger project will hopefully tell us all we need to know about wildcats and how to protect them without resorting to this type of crude and invasive investigation.

Wildcats fear us and with good reason. Let's leave them in peace wherever they choose to live; they deserve nothing less.

ANNE M KEENAN

Roshven

Lochailort