Big Cat Rescue: Caring for Jungle Pets

“Sher Khan was bred to be a white tiger. He’s not white so they rejected him. He languished for four months in a pet carrier,” Phyllis Middaugh said. Phyllis is a retired teacher and dedicated volunteer at Tampa’s Big Cat Rescue. She was just promoted to Senior Animal Caretaker at the center and proudly wears her new green sweatshirt.

“Our volunteers wear red, yellow, green, and blue. Blue is the master.” Phyllis was overjoyed with her new status, earned after four years of volunteer work. It meant that she can now clean the enclosures of lions, tigers, and leopards without going inside. “I go around the outside with a bucket and plastic bags. I use a ten-foot pole with a hoop at the end.”

Not everyone gets to scoop out mounds of tiger poop just for the privilege of being near big cats. Volunteers that work at Big Cat Rescue love their jobs. “I came out here the day I retired and thank God every day,” Phyllis beamed, admiring the largest cat they have, magnificent Sher Khan. He was inside his enclosure sleeping away on his side, while his companion, China Doll, another rescued tiger, slept on her back. She is beautiful and complacent, totally at home in the surroundings, a big paw on the rebar metal enclosure.

“Carole Baskin, our founder, found Khan at a pet auction. He was emaciated, his baby teeth were rotting. Carole brought Khan here, gave him water therapy, good food, and vitamins. He was not a happy tiger. Then a lady called the center. She wanted to get rid of a female tiger so Carole took in China Doll and she is Khan’s perfect companion,” Phyllis explained.

Carole Baskin and her husband Howard are real estate investors. Carole originally bought 55 acres within the city limits of Tampa for investment in 1992. The place needed grazing so Carole went to a pet auction to buy alpacas to graze the land, and wound up buying a baby bobcat.

That bobcat passed away just recently at about 20 years of age.

Carole decided to find another bobcat to keep the first company. She accounts on her website how her and her husband went to Minnesota and found 56 bobcats at a “fur farm,” where she was shocked by the conditions. Carole brought all 56 bobcats back to Tampa and put them up for adoption.

The adoptions worked until the bobcats reached maturity, and people gave them back.

In 1996 a decision was made that there would be no breeding at the sanctuary. “We are recognized by the Association of Sanctuaries. Laws are so lax in the animal trade,” Phyllis lamented.

As a volunteer, she takes people on tours of the sanctuary, but many animals are in their enclosures in areas that are not on the tour. Some have been abused by people or exploited in roadside zoos and circuses.

Next…Jungle cats are bred in captivity for the entertainment industry

• http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003045068419 Joe Schreibvogel

  [This isn't true.] This tiger was bought from a private residence for $800.00 I have the receipts. and the 56 bobcats were bought and taken to florida and sold as pets to private homes, we have that paperwork also and spoke to the fur farm. check out http://www.911animalabuse.org

• http://www.facebook.com/people/Lynn-Culver/568803741 Lynn Culver

  It is important to note that Carole Baskin willingly broke the federal laws to purchase Sher Khan, a less than three-month-old tiger, born on 12-20-94 at Dennis Hill’s compound, and picked up in Indiana on 3-12-95, at the age of 11 weeks. A cub that young has probably spent most of his life sleeping, and when awake, bottle-feeding. Cubs only begin to explore their environment at about the age of 6 weeks. So this article is not factual when it lets Carole state Sher Khan languished in a carrier for 4 months, unless she is referring to the quality of care she provided him after she broke the law to purchase him and transport him in interstate commerce to her Florida home, to be the first pet tiger at her Wildlife On Easy Street, collection of cats.
   
  The Endangered Species Act was passed by Congress to protect animals such as Sher Khan from being purchased in interstate commerce for pet ownership.  When Carole paid to buy Sher Khan from Dennis Hill, without holding the required Dept of Interior F & W Interstate Commerce permit to make such a purchase, she was not qualified to own a tiger, and she broke the ESA laws to obtain him. 
   
  There was no generic tiger exemption back then – but that didn’t stop Carole from ignoring the ESA and breaking the law to get what she wanted for herself.  I do not know if Sher Khan was in a dirty carrier, or abused as stated in this story. I do know that Carole herself is lying when she states he was 4 months old, according to her own USDA transfer papers, and I have seen her video of him stating he was a perfect cub, so that puts everything else she says as suspect.
  Lynn Culver 

• tigerskpr

   Big Cat Rescue is nothing more then a “roadside zoo” and not even a good one.Yet, they want to close down other zoos.They make up stories about cats that they owned as “PETS” to get people to donate money to them. When they couldn’t get into AZA they made up the Association of Sanctuaries. Carole Baskin is a millionaire, let her feed her own pets!