Freya’s Treatment

Freya is one of our young, nine-month-old male cheetahs. He and his brother Frigge were initially assumed to be females when they arrived at CCF’s Safe House in Hargeisa, and by the time they were discovered to be males, the female names had stuck. They are fairly easy to handle, which is useful when cheetahs fall ill. Freya recently had a bout of pneumonia, and despite apparently making a full recovery, he unfortunately fell ill again about a week ago when he was seen coughing. He has fluid in his chest and the vet team have been monitoring him closely, administering medicine and checking his lungs and weight twice a day.

Each evening Freya is taken inside one of the rooms in a house onsite to spend the night, as the nights are still quite cold. Frigge accompanies him so that he is not alone. In the morning, Freya is weighed, he is x-rayed to check on the fluid in his lungs, and the two are then released back into their enclosure for the day. The same procedure happens in the evening. He is fed twice a day and is eating relatively well. The medication is hidden in the feed, and whilst he is eating a vet administered subcutaneous fluids via a drip. This is because the one medication we are administering is a diuretic which works to remove the liquid from his lungs, so we need to make sure that he is staying hydrated. Freya is remarkably unfazed by all of this, as you can see from the photos!

Since treatment began he has been improving slowly, and we hope that he will soon be back to full health.