Kinji is a friendly young cheetah who lives with Cheetah Experience, a South African nonprofit that creates sanctuaries for endangered species.
In addition to cheetahs, there are also leopards, lions, and wolves living here, but Kinji’s favorite is the meerkat family that lives in a corner of the reserve.
This is what Kinji looked like when he was 8 months old and when he was 2 years old.
Ever since he was young, he would make purring sounds when he visited the meerkats. Kinji, who is thought by the staff to not purr, is really rare to hear him purr.
However, depending on how you look at it, it seems as if the meerkat is being ignored as a “trinket” that is furiously attacking from behind the cage and saying, “Do you want to do it? Aaaan!?” as if it were a personal grooming item.
Is it petting, playing around, or stopping punching?
Kinji loves his “little friends” so much that he often shows up to see them, as shown in the video. Unfortunately, however, it seems that the meerkats who are important to him do not understand his feelings at all.
For the meerkats, Kinji is a natural enemy and a threat. Kinji, on the other hand, seems to just be trying to get their attention.
Dolph C. Volcker, a zoologist who cares for all the animals at the sanctuary, says that Kinji rarely purrs in this way, so meerkat “attacks” are one of the only ways to hear him purr. It is said that it will become one.
Will Kinji’s feelings not reach him? Cheetah’s one-way love
Volker, who has known Kinji for a long time, believes the extremely friendly animal has an affinity for meerkats that goes beyond being just a groomer.
“Even I can’t make him purr. He seems to enjoy the meerkats scratching his fur, but the meerkats are clearly trying to get him to do something serious. “I’m here”
Does he like the wild way he scratches?
However, Kinji himself is indifferent to their feelings, so the situation is complicated in a sense. Unrequited love sounds nice, but for the meerkat family, Kinji is a terrible enemy who regularly threatens them.
He wants to somehow clear up the misunderstanding between the two, but it will be extremely difficult to gain the understanding of the meerkat family, who instinctively fear Kinji. This is also a one-way love that only animals can do, and we have no choice but to watch it.