Melissa Harris-Perry: We're back with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Nature documentaries have long played an important role helping humans discover the plants, animals and ecosystems that make up our world. A new documentary called Wildcat showcases how the natural world can help humans heal trauma within ourselves. The film follows a British military veteran, Harry Turner, who finds solace raising an orphaned baby ocelot in Peru's Amazon Rainforest.

Harry Turner: The reintroduction was always for one reason, that was to put a wildcat back into the wild again. Sorry, it's hard to let go of something you love.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I sat down with Harry earlier this week told me that while the documentary was born out of his love for the natural world, it also tells a more complicated story of navigating mental illness.

Harry Turner: This film came about just because of a passion of mine. I was in the middle of the jungle filming because I was 21 years old after coming back from Afghanistan. I was struggling. I was 21 years old dealing with my depression, and I was walking through the jungles with this wildcat.

This journey starts unraveling not only with this cat but with my mental health. This film I think can relate to so many different people because there's just so many avenues and corridors that people can look at. This film is a unique film from the stance of conservation and the stance of mental health.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It is unique and draws us into asking questions about the core aspects of our humanity. You say in the film that you wanted to go to a place where no one knows if I'm alive or knows that I'm dead. Can you help us understand why the Peruvian Amazon represented that space for you?

Harry Turner: After my tour in Afghanistan in 2012, I was 18 years old. After I'd finished I had just turned 19. Anyone who has been on tour has definitely had their own experiences and has definitely taken a second look at their life, and they've reevaluated their life slightly. I was struggling deeply with PTSD and depression and anxiety. I just needed to escape. Coming from the United Kingdom, there isn't really anywhere that you can escape.

It's a very small compact piled in place. I wanted to escape. I wanted to get away, but I didn't know where. Growing up, I used to watch documentaries and TV programs about different places like Africa or different places like the Amazon. I just remember one day after I'd been medically discharged from the British Army, just going online and just thinking I need to go away. I need to escape. I need to go somewhere, which I can just hide.

I can just go away, and if I do die then no one would be able to find me. I decided to just book a ticket and pack my bags and go. When I was there, I landed into this airport, this tiny little cabin of an airport, and I had no idea what language they spoke. I didn't know what currency they used. I just dove in at the deepest end I possibly could because of my situation and where I was mentally.

Melissa Harris-Perry: When you first go into the Amazon again saying that it is for you a place where you can be completely alone, and yet you're documenting it. Talk to me a little bit about that decision to begin to document.

Harry Turner: I went from the place of being extremely uncomfortable and depressed to a place of being in the jungle and seeing an animal for the first time. For me personally, that just excited me so much. When I first ever saw my first ocelot or saw my first jaguar or saw my first slof, I got this a feeling of pure adrenaline that just I can't explain it to anyone, but how I felt it was just like this incredible feeling.

It felt like I wasn't alone. It felt like I needed to be a part of this earth. I was photographing different bits and pieces, a few snakes, frogs, trying to get some monkeys and birds. Then when Khan came into the mix, Khan is the first ocelot that you see in the documentary. I just was like, "This is unbelievable." I am dealing with my issues in a way which isn't normal. I'm just wandering barefoot in the jungle, and I am experiencing this with this animal.

It just felt completely surreal. I just wanted to film it because I wanted to have their memories. I never thought about making a documentary. That wasn't even a thought in my head. I thought I just wanted to have this footage so that I could look back on it. Honestly just started recording because I just felt like this was going to be such a cool memory to keep.

Melissa Harris-Perry: To me, that journey that you even just took us on is so extraordinary. I just want to mark it that even that act of documenting something in order to have it as a memory is making a commitment to live.

Harry Turner: I think that when I'm in the jungle, I forget about all my issues, I forget about all of my problems, but they're still there. I want to be a healthy human being, and I want to be somebody who doesn't struggle with depression, but at the end of the day, that's going to be a part of me for life now. It was also a way of healing.

If you've ever seen the film Cast Away, you see that when he's alone on the island, he's actually talking to a volleyball. In my eyes, the volleyball was my camera. I was like healing via the camera. I think that's what gives it the depth that it does in the movie.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to us about ocelots as a species, as a cat and then about the specific ocelot.

Harry Turner: Ocelots are a small semi-arboreal cat. They live from the southernmost tip of Texas, and they go all the way through Central America, and they go into South America. The only place they don't really hit in South America is actually Chile.

They're this beautiful cat with white markings around their eyes, white markings on their ears, and they have a golden coat with black [unintelligible 00:07:01] markings. Illegal logging, hunting and deforestation is the main cause of why these animals are getting taken from their natural surroundings.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back to talk about how raising a wildcat might share some common threads with parenting.

Harry Turner: They're going to be a pain. They're going to do all the sorts of things to wind you up, and they're going to get in trouble a lot. You have to be the one to guide them to be the best that they possibly can.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We're back with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Continuing my conversation with Harry Turner, who's featured in the new documentary Wildcat in his journey through the Amazon to overcome his war-induced PTSD and depression, Harry adopts two orphaned ocelots named Khan and Keanu.

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Harry Turner: Khan, are you hungry? Aren't you?

Melissa Harris-Perry: As Harry told me, there are lots of challenges to being a parent, especially to an ocelot.

Harry Turner: To be honest they're useless in the jungle without their mum. They are like normal house cats. They are born, and then they can't see for the first two weeks because their eyes are closed and then their sight is terrible up until about a month and a month and a half old.

To bring them up and take them on the journey that they needed to be on to become wild, I needed to do what my mother had to do. That was sleeping with them, cleaning them, feeding them. That's just how it started.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As you talked about the respect, the love, the looking up to your own parents and you were in some ways the parent to these orphaned ocelots. What are the ways that this is like parenting and that it's not like parenting?

Harry Turner: I was a mom to them because they needed a mother in that time. The similarities to parenthood are the fact that they're going to be troublesome, they're going to be a pain, they're going to do all the sorts of things to wind you up, and they're going to get in trouble a lot. You have to be the one to guide them to be the best that they possibly can. People can relate.

They're like, oh, I remember when my child did something ridiculous and it put me in a place of anxiety. At the end of the day, these cats just needed a mother. They needed someone to look up to. They needed someone to protect them. They needed somebody to hunt for them and help them with food because it's very hard for them to catch their first meal. When they do, that's a huge milestone. The only difference is that I had to be aggressive towards them because the jungle is not a kind and friendly place. It's very dangerous. It's extremely daunting. There's issues everywhere, not just in the jungle itself being dangerous with different animals and disease and just the dangers of anything, but you also have the dangers of people. You also have the dangers of encroachment, people making illegal camps, or cutting down illegal trees. I had to become this fierce person. I had to become this angry person because they had to realize that everything wasn't fun and games.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Perhaps also like parenting, for all that you give to your children or to those in your care, they also give a great deal back to you. You've said a bit about that already, but maybe you can leave us with a sense of how your care for these ocelots altered you and what they gave back to you.

Harry Turner: When I first went to the jungle, I had recently left the military. I knew bits and pieces about the jungle, but I didn't know everything. I wasn't born there, I'm not a native, I don't know the ins and outs and everything to do with the jungle. When I originally went, I went there with a herpetologist. That's someone who studies reptiles and amphibians. I was learning bits and pieces via the scientists and I was learning bits and pieces by these other researchers. I was learning what you learn in a textbook. For me, personally, I never did very well at school. I struggle with dyslexia, and I can't sit down and read a book and keep the information in my head, but what I can do is I can work with my hands and be outdoors and I can collect knowledge that way.

When these ocelots came to me, when the first one came to me, I thought I have no idea what I'm doing here. I know what an ocelot is, I know what their diet is, I know that jungle pretty well at this point, but I'm still skeptical about my knowledge. What these ocelots gave to me was a sense of learning. They became my teachers, they taught me so much about the jungle, they taught me how to walk off-trail and navigate. They taught me how to listen for different animals and see and smell different animals. They taught me to basically become an ocelot.

Whilst they were teaching me, I was also teaching and helping them. It was like this relationship that we formed together of teaching each other different bits of the jungle. It was just the most incredible feeling, just walking in the jungle and learning from this animal, but also walking in the jungle and helping this animal become the most fierce and the most incredible cat that he could possibly be.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What is in the future for you?

Harry Turner: Yes. I have started a non-profit called Emerald Arch. Emerald Arch is going to be focusing on many things. We don't really want to keep our eggs in one basket, but our main project is actually going to be buying and protecting land in Ecuador. As you see, at the end of the film, I actually go to Ecuador, and that's where I actually ended up staying for a long period of time. Ecuador became like this base for me, I love there. I love the diversity. I love everything about it. When I was there, I saw so many issues and I wanted to help so I started Emerald Arch so that we can raise money and funds so that we can buy and protect land, not only just to protect it from humans, but so we can protect it for potentially future reintroductions of different animals.

We also are going to be doing a lot of community development in that area. We want to help people and we want to educate people in the area with our way envision of doing things but also incorporating the native people. What we want to do is we want to make a retreat. This retreat is going to be mainly for people struggling with PTSD, mainly veterans who have served and come out of the army or the military and are dealing with issues and they don't know how to.

Now for me personally, it took me 14 days to realize that I was okay to live in this world, and that was being disconnected from the internet, from my phone, from just being in the jungle 24/7 waking up to the monkeys and going to sleep with the frogs. It reset me. This retreat is going to be a place where we can bring people struggling with depression to the jungle and it can give them a new start on life because Emerald Arch doesn't just want to save rainforests they also want to save lives at the same time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's a truly beautiful vision. Harry Turner served the new documentary Wildcat, which is playing in theaters and streaming on Amazon Prime. Harry, thanks so much for taking the time with us.

Harry Turner: Thank you very much.

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