Great Cat Adventures

If it caught you off guard that yesterday I posted a few pictures of yours truly with some wild kitties, you're not alone.  Sometimes when I looks at those pictures I get a little caught off guard too.

I think they're growing teeth!

In college I wasn't entirely sure what career path I wanted to take.  My sophomore year, I had it narrowed down to: zoo enrichment, wild animal training, or dog training/shelter work.  Since we had to complete an internship for school and I was already employed at the shelter, I started looking for something "cool."  But every zoo internship was expensive and, quite frankly, boring.  You couldn't touch the animals, talk to the animals, or take pictures of them.  You could really only pick up their poop.  Well, I picked up plenty of poop at work, and I didn't think elephant poop would be a huge upgrade.  So I kept looking.

She's still sleeping, right?

So I moved on to sanctuaries with educational components.  Generally, if a sanctuary has an educational show or department, there is some handling of the animals.  That was how I found Great Cat Adventures.  As a little college kid, I was hooked:  you travel with a few of the sanctuary's animals to fairs and shows, educating the public about endangered cats and raising money for the sanctuary.  Plus, you got to raise a tiger cub.  PLUS they paid you to do it!

Well, my friend and I applied and almost immediately heard back that they would love to have our help.  Traveling around in an RV all summer with people you don't know isn't always fun, so it's great to have a friend there for the adventure.

Doesn't that sound AWESOME?!?!?

Yes and no.  Hanging out with tigers, leopards, servals, and a mountain lion is awesome.  Going into the pen to play with some of the big cats during the educational show is incredible (and more than a little scary) and having a baby tiger to call your own is pretty darn cool.  But living with a crazy Texan, his wife, and 3 of their 6 kids that they don't take care of?  Not great.  Plus, about half the things we were allowed to do is not technically legal.

Rosie the baby serval

Not knowing much about sanctuaries going into the internship, we assumed that they followed the rules.  But the first day we helped move the big tigers with no training, learned that the tiger cubs we were raising were far younger than the public knew, and many of the "rescued" cats were actually purchased or bartered from illegal sources.  Anything to keep the show on the road and keep money coming was the motto around Great Car Adventures. 

During my travels I earned a scar from the mountain lion, who thought we were playing and used his teeth, I saw their youngest son nearly die when he toddled over the see the leopards, and watched them buy their daughter a wild cat on e-bay.  In the end, my friend and I left a few weeks early to head home.  The experience was incredible and I wouldn't trade it for a thing, but it got to a point that we needed to take a stand against the operation they called a sanctuary.  We filed reports about the care of the cats, but nothing has actually changed.  They still have their sanctuary, which has a new name and a new manager, and the appeal of petting a baby tiger means that money is still pouring in for Jay and his operation.  In the end, I decided to stick with dogs as a career path so that I could live wherever I wanted and be my own boss.

But I still miss little Tubbs and the rest of the fluffy gang.