Big Cats About the House

Big cat expert Giles Clark embarks on his biggest mission to date: to turn the Big Cat Sanctuary in Kent into a centre of global excellence for big cat conservation. He steps in to help Maya, a five-day-old black jaguar cub. Neglected by her mother, she is weak and vulnerable. Taking her home, Giles provides her with care around the clock. We get to know Maya, witness her developmental milestones and her relationship with Giles, his fiancee Kathryn and daughter Sam.

Giles has his hands full at the sanctuary, improving the lives of the 50 cats that live there and working towards their becoming ambassadors for their wild cousins. Giles experiences the plight of big cats in the wild first-hand. He travels to Cambodia, where he sees the dilemma that clouded leopards are facing. The trip fuels Giles's determination to want to raise awareness and much-needed help.

At the sanctuary, Giles and his team plan their annual open days where they kick off raising funds. At home Maya is growing well and has started to move around the house, but suddenly her health deteriorates and she develops eyesight and mobility issues. She is rushed to a high-end veterinary hospital where, at only five weeks old, her life hangs in the balance.

Maya is now seven weeks old and is becoming extremely determined and vocal. Giles is feeling overwhelmed about the enormity of what he has taken on with the sanctuary but is paying close attention to Maya's health, in particular her wavering eyesight and back legs that still seem a little wobbly.

Kathryn and Sam are learning the ropes and have fallen in love with their new houseguest. Maya turns from a vulnerable baby into a boisterous toddler. She learns to leap out of her box, exploring the house on her own and as all her teeth cut through, she takes to chewing Giles's prized possessions. Protective and patient, he is there to encourage her development. At eight weeks old Maya leaves the house for the first time and is given meat for the first time, and Giles builds her a climbing frame in the garden so she can learn to climb like jaguars do in the wild.

To help her neurological condition, Giles takes Maya to a hydrotherapy centre, and she starts to show signs of improvement. Maya is launched to the world at the Summer Ball, where in one night Giles raises £15,000 that he wants to use to help jaguars in the wild. He travels to Costa Rica to find out what is happening to jaguars, and how he can help. He takes to the air to see the most important rainforest corridor in Central America and joins a team on the ground to plant trees to safeguard its future.

Maya is ten weeks old and is starting to push the family to their limits. She is wreaking havoc in the house, destroying the bookshelf, getting into the fridge and ripping up the sofa. She is showing possessive behaviours with her toys and Kathryn and Sam are noticing that she is starting to bite hard too. Maya is doing so well that Giles is invited to take her on BBC Breakfast so he can raise the profile of all big cats around the world.

Giles takes in a cheetah called Willow - at five months old she is recovering from an incident where she broke her paw. She was unable to return to her mother and siblings and it is back to late nights for Giles as he builds her trust. Having raised enough money, Giles goes to Kenya with GPS collars he has funded and darts and collars a female in a pride that needs his help. Maya is given the all clear on her health by the vet. Both Maya and Willow now live with all the other cats at the sanctuary playing their role as ambassadors for their wild cousins globally.