A world-record breaking athlete attempting a 13,000km run from Beijing to London has rescued a baby kitten along the way. Jack Jarvis set off from Tiananmen Square in August in an attempt to smash a world record and raise money for charity.
The former soldier made an unexpected discovery after encountering a four-week-old kitten in the Gobi desert. The young cat was left abandoned at the side of a road with a small pot of milk near the city of Turpan in Xinjiang province on Tuesday, October 6.
Unexpected encounter in the desert
He told Metro: ‘I was literally running along near the town of Turpan. She was just there in the middle of the desert. She came straight over to me.’
‘I picked her up. I was never going to leave her to die. She was so scared and frightened, and if I was marooned in a desert I certainly want someone to help me.’
After feeding the kitten water and mashed eggs, she was safely settled in with Mr Jarvis’s accompanying team, who are following him by road.
Plans for the kitten
Having formed a close bond with the kitten, Mr Jarvis is hoping to have her flown to the UK so she can have ‘the best life possible’. However, he is unable to keep the animal for now, as at an estimated four to six weeks old, she is too young to have a rabies vaccine to cross the border into Kazakhstan.
Crossing one of the world’s tightest frontiers from China’s Xinjiang autonomous province, Gobi – as she is now called – would have to stay 90 days in China before able to have a rabies test, after which she would be given the all clear to travel. Mr Jarvis explained that she would probably be ‘put down’ on arrival in the UK, were he to keep hold of her until his final destination – London’s Trafalgar Square.
Mr Jarvis said: ‘So unfortunately, while we would absolutely love to take this little bundle of joy with us, we can’t.’
Rescue centre and future care
The double world-record holder is taking Gobi to a rescue centre in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, where Mr Jarvis has said he himself would stump up the £200 required to have the kitten looked after for a year. Gobi is then to be taken to Slaughterhouse Survivors, a charity in Harbin, the capital of China’s northernmost province, Heilongjiang.
He still hopes Gobi will one day see the UK, but for now the pair will part company on Sunday. ‘We’re going to miss her as we already love her’, he said.
Mr Jarvis’s mega run will see him tackle around 31 miles a day in what will add up to the equivalent of 300 marathons through 18 different countries. So far he has completed 3,300 kilometres on the trip and as of today is 710km from reaching the Kazakh border.
He is doing the challenge to raise both awareness and funds for the charity Brainstrust, in honour of his grandfather who died from brain cancer. The run hasn’t been without its challenges – his team lost some electrical equipment after their van was robbed in transit, and he suffered an injury on day 16 of the journey and had also been stopped by police because of road closures.
