Big Cat Rescue

Cameron

Big Cat rescue is an organization in Tampa that rescues big cats; lions, tigers, cougars, bobcats and many others, from abusive situations, from when they were taken in as pets and became too much for the owners to handle, as well as the occasional cat that can’t be released into the wild.  They are a non-profit organization that is also dedicated to educating the public about the cats and trying to encourage people not to participate in pay-to-play photo-op, circuses and other similar ventures.  They give tours as part of a way to support the cats.





  I’m not a fan of zoos, though there are some good organizations out there.  Big Cat Rescue tends to not act as much like a zoo, limiting the time that they are open to visitors to two times daily, most days of the week.

  We visited the cats on May 26th.  They have several acres and try to engage the cats with larger and varied enclosures, cardboard animals they can stalk, toys, bags of catnip and other spices and, for the larger cats, a 2.5 acre “vacation” enclosure they can roam for 2 weeks at a time, on rotation, during the year.

Sassyfrass

  These are some beautiful animals. Their stories are often heartbreaking. Many are shy of people and you won’t see them on your tour. The staff won’t parade them out, or wake them from their dens during the tour.  This is their home, the staff says.  Good for them (and much to the chagrin of one of our fellow visitors). To do that would make them no better them the organizations they are trying to shut down.

Sundari

I will go back to Big Cat Rescue, probably for their photo tour next time. I would be able to spend more time at any one cat and not have to listen to ignorant tourists grumble about sleeping or hidden cats, or ask the guide a question they had only moments before answered had that person been listening.  And I would go in cooler weather both for me and for the cats, when they will be a little more active and the sun isn’t near the peak of summer.


You can visit Big Cat Rescue's webpage here. And see the rest of my photos on my flickr page, Big Cat Rescue Album.

Kali

Do not try this at home....

Every once and a while we catch Mara and Nyala sleeping together...


Usually its on the bed... in the sunshine.


and sometimes by a window.


It often devolves into a wrestling match, if Mara doesn't get up and leave...


But often times, when we've gone out for something, we come home to find them together in a chair. I think Nyala suffers from a little separation anxiety. So she seeks Mara out when we're not here...


Sometimes we find them on a bar stool...


yes, both... on one bar stool...


These days, they've begun to turn it into an art form.


They're so cute together...

Sometimes Mara's is tolerant enough to let Nyala shift positions.


Bast... Why me...?


Other times Nyala simply sits on top of her... Peacefully, at the moment...


In the end, if it lasts, they usually end up side by side...
...facing the same direction...

In the same position
... at the same time....


I call it "Synchronized Napping"...






These cats are professionals, do not try this at home....

Mara. Up Close.

Lying in the sun...

Upside down...

Paws at the ready...

Nose in the sun.

Be Careful What You Wish For...

Friends? Well, maybe. We do keep catching them sitting together. Touching even.


Some days, Mara seems annoyed that Nyala is so close. Other days they are sound asleep, side by side.


Next thing you know Nyala's sleeping with her face buried in Mara's belly.

When Mara was young, she always wanted to be close to Tina. Tina never really wanted any part of it. Now the table is turned. Nyala wants to sleep with Mara. Mara, on the other hand isn't always so sure. Usually it starts with Mara sleeping somewhere. Nyala slips in, and snuggles up next to her. There's some grumping and swatting, but with luck, Nyala will settle in for a nap.


All too often it devolves quickly. Nyala was raised without a Mom-cat. She and Brother were left to themselves until they were six weeks old, with only a human-mom-surrogate. There was no one to tell them "don't jump on me (swat)" every time they woke up. So that's what they did. Every minute of every hour they were awake, they were chewing on one another. That's what kittens do. When Nyala came home, that's how she approached Mara, as a giant chew-toy, just like Brother. Mara was none too happy about that.

Things have gotten a little better since then.


Nyala still chews on Mara.


Sometimes she puts up with it for a a few minutes. In the end, Mara usually gets up and leaves. After all, with kittens, there is always some chewing before sleeping. Mara's patience has grown. She even chews back, sometimes.


In the meantime, there are chases around the house. Sometimes it's Nyala doing the chasing... and sometimes, with tail high and ears forward, it's Mara. I think she likes having someone to play with who is her own size. What's more, when the chasing is done, Mara has someone to nap with, if Nyala would only stop chewing on her.


So you get your wish, Mara. Sadly, you are the big cat now, and someone wants to sleep with you.


Maybe, one day, she might even learn some manners. And that wouldn't be all that bad... would it?

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tabby...

One thing I've noticed about our cats is they've all pretty much learned that there is sometimes more then one way to chase a toy or feather around an obstacle. If I drag the feather one way around the island in the kitchen, Mara knows that she can run around the other way and intercept it. Pretty smart, actually. It demonstrates a pretty good understanding of spacial relationships, probably a skill that was useful when they had to hunt for their meals. It also appears to be something that is learned. Mara has known how to intercept things for some time now. Nyala on the other hand has just started to figure this out.

This morning while we were eating breakfast, the girls were playing and chasing. They were both standing in the living room. Nyala took off in one direction and Mara took off in the other, both at a dead run. Their paths crossed behind the couch...

Now I'm sure you've seen this... The action film high flying wire work. Two combatants, launch at each other into the air, their trajectories to take them past one anther mid flight. There is a great example in Big Trouble, Little China. The Hero jumps into the air toward the villain, who himself has launched toward the hero. As they pass in mid air, they exchange several sword thrusts, parries and strikes, then continue on their way, landing on their feet and launching again toward one another. It was also an effect used in numerous other martial arts genera films.

The two cats approached headed straight for one another. Then, in perfect unison, both jumped into the air, their respective momentums carrying each past the other. We watched as both cats, paws extended in front of them to swat the other, sailed past one another, each watching the other pass, then landing on their feet and continuing their run. Edward and I just looked at each other and started laughing. We'd both seen the same thing. Straight out of the movies, no wires needed... Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tabby...

That's why two cats can be so much fun....

Ring Tailed Cat

She was so tiny when she came home. She weighed only eight tenths of a pound and was just the length of my hand. Her eyes were seafoam gray, not yet the cool yellow that they would become. The doctor thought she might only be 3 or 4 weeks old, too young to be taken away from her mother. She was the smallest kitten we’d ever taken in.

She came to us when we were thinking about getting a kitten. Our youngest at that time was Smoke at 10 years old. A friend at work had just adopted a pregnant female and was looking for homes for the kittens. We’d agreed to take one if there was a female in the litter. But that’s not where she came from. Another colleague got up one Sunday morning to find a box of 4 small kittens at the end of his driveway. Someone has left them there, knowing I guess, that he would find them homes. Tina was one of those four. When we were deciding which kitten to take home Tina fell asleep on my leg. The deal was sealed. We went from my colleague’s house directly to the vet. Then brought her home. Four weeks later we brought home Sara, from that first litter of kittens, now we had two very tiny cats.

Tina was so tiny that she hadn’t had time to learn all the social graces of being a cat from her mother. I’d hoped that she would learn from the other three cats that we had at the time. But Sandy took and instant dislike to her, something that never changed. Smoke was the first to adopt her. He remained her life long friend. Thomas was mostly afraid of her at first, but grew to play with her as well.

She imprinted on Edward, since he was home all day. He would leave her in the bed where she would sleep. When she woke she would cry for him, not moving off the bed until she saw him come for her, a behavior she would continue to do her whole life, crying for us when she woke up alone until one of us would come find her, to let her know it was OK to move. She also decided that my ponytail was most like the mother she lost too early, and began trying to nurse there, after first trying Edward’s hair. The doctor said she might do it her whole life. She did. She was confused in 2007 when I lost my hair to chemo, but when my hair grew back, she decided she would sit on the pillow and put one paw on either side of my head, breading first with the left paw, then the right, before plopping her head down on mine and going to sleep as if to be sure it didn’t go away again. I lost count of the number of times I went to sleep with Tina on my pillow, her head resting on mine.

She was often willful and bored quickly with new toys. She demanded attention by scratching furniture she shouldn’t, or the wallpaper, before we took it down. She saw the walls painted and the carpet replaced, the roof redone and the spa removed. In her last days she saw the windows in the house replaced with hurricane windows. If we’d known what was going on we would have waited, to make her last days more peaceful, rather then with the noise and stress that comes with any major home renovation.

There are so many things I miss about her. The times she would greet me at the door when I got home. The way she would plop down on our laps, daring us to move once she’d settled. She would always insist that there was something on our lap to sit on, a blanket or pillow, as if she didn’t want to touch us when she sat on us. Her purr was so quiet that for a long time the only way we knew she was purring was to feel her throat. She never learned to rub on our legs, but instead always went through the motion, only to miss by a few inches. She would burrow into a pile of laundry still warm from the dryer, and swat any items we tried to remove from it to fold. She’d just learned to like butter from our plates after breakfast. Or her claws in my neck as she breaded and nursed in my ponytail at night. What I would give to still feel that.

We lost Tina just 5 months after losing Smoke. Smoke was 19, Tina was only 9. I’d thought that she, too, would live a long life. That maybe she could challenge Smoke for the record of longest lived cat. She’d always been healthy. I thought I would have years with her. By the time we knew there was a problem, we had days. I feel terribly guilty for that. I was able to stay home the day before she died. I’m grateful for that. I hope she knows I love her, and miss her. I hope one day she decides to come back to us. I miss her terribly...

Hidden in the gray of her fur were tiger stripes that you could only see when the light was right. At the end of her tail was ring of white fur. We always laughed that it was a halo, not over her head, but over the other end, which contributed to her willful disposition. She grew from a fraction of a pound to being a big cat, weighing in at 12 pounds. But she was always Tiny-Tina to us. She will always be Tiny-Tina in our hearts... Our ring tailed cat...

Afterimage

I found him to be notoriously difficult to photograph... and in the end equally dificult to sketch. If the light wasn't just right, he simply came out as a black shadow, none of the details of his coat would show. He was a long haired cat, whose shoulder fur was short. His tail waved above his back like a plume of ... smoke. His neck sported long lighter fur that hung about his shoulders like an Elizabethan collar. In the sun, his fur took on a brown hue, where is was normally black and gray. The slightest breeze would ruffle the tips of the guard hairs. He'd always turn his nose to the wind. He was declawed before we got him, and he stood splay-footed, something I always wondered if it was because of the loss of his toes.

In the last days of his life I told myself several times I wasn't going to take any more picutres of him. That I had enough and many good ones from his younger days, before his fur dulled and separated and his whiskers turned white. I didn't stick to that. Twice more I was able to capture him, once in the days before he lost his sight peering out the front window, and once after his sight was gone, on the porch listening for the sounds that were now more distant then near.

As with some of the cats, the inspiration to sketch didn't strike until the last day. And even then it almost didn't take. For me, to sit an sketch something is to really look at it. There was nothing more I wanted to do that day then watch him, and wish that we had more time. To wish also that he could rest, because he couldn't sit still that day. So for him, like the others, I got out my pad and pencil, and watched my friend pace, hoping to fix his image once and for all in my mind, and perhaps on paper for others to see.

He settled only once during the morning, and I got a quick outline, but he was sitting under the end table, and like all the photos I'd tried, the light wasn't right and he was hard to see. A little later, silhouette followed, and another sketch as he rested on the porch. In the past, the patterns of color in the cat's fur always made my job somewhat easier. Light and dark played with the texture and length of their fur. Not with Smoke. He was all black, and long haired to boot. You couldn't capture his face with a dark smudge here and an absence of line there. The detail of his shape was lost and found in the pattern of his fur, you couldn't just draw an outline, or so I thought. Midafternoon, he settled at the foot of one of the office chairs. He sat there resting between pacing, and from the paper emerged an outline that required no fill. For once I had captured the long haired black cat in a few simple strokes. My mind's eye filled in the rest. I didn't try to draw all of him, I didn't need to, and in that final sketch, that final picture, I saw the young cat that had come to us so long ago. Here, very simply, was Smoke, reaching out and resting, at peace and at home.

We buried Smoke with the others in the back yard, under the bird bath. Five friends rest there now. Seven statues of cats grace the surrounding garden. One for each buried there, and two for those who are missing from the garden, but not forgotten.

My computer's screen saver lets me choose pictures to scroll across the screen, panning back and forth across the images. For now, and a little while longer, those are all pictures of Smoke. All images that captured a friend in motion, memories to remind me of one who is gone. Those images are freeze frames of a life that was always on the go. Now, the pictures have stopped moving and the life is gone. But the soul remains and the love will go on forever.

I miss you, Sir Cat...

Thomas...

I lost a good friend last Thursday, a friend of 14 years. My 16-year old orange tom cat, Thomas, finally lost his battle with kidney failure. He’d been struggling since December, requiring nearly constant care in the end. He’d been barely eating in the last few weeks and not at all for the last few days. We had been giving him fluids under the skin to keep him comfortable.

Thomas had a rough life at the start. He’d never fully trusted us at first, and trusted Edward even less. See there was this man, a neighbor told us, that had beaten him then left him to fend for himself in the winter in Maryland. When we finally trapped him, 4 months later, Thomas was thin and cold, and wanted nothing but to get back outside to fend for himself. He soon figured out that inside meant regular meals and a warm place to sleep, if he could just learn to get along with those other two cats in the house. Thomas, at age 2, the doctor guessed, had never been neutered, and so he had a strong wide chest and a jowly face that only an un-neutured male gets. The first night we had him I set him on the couch beside me, he purred nervously and looked as if he would run at any moment. We could only guess that he’d never been allowed on the furniture. For the first few years whenever we entered the room and he was on the couch he would immediately jump down, as if caught where he wasn’t supposed to be. His purr was always rough and his meow never smooth, but after a while he began to trust us. Thomas hid from everyone who came to the house, especially men. If Edward grew a beard, he got especially wary. Loud men also sent him scurrying for cover. I remember once, pulling him from under a bed to prove to friends that I really had an orange cat. That all changed when Mike started feeding him treats while cat-sitting for us. Then, whenever Mike came over, Thomas would run to the cabinet where the treats were kept and beg. Quite a change from the shy cat we took in 14 years ago.

He wasn’t your typical orange cat, either. His fur, thick and soft, was a bleached version of every other orange cat I’ve ever seen. With a white blaze on his chest and belly and white tips on his paws, he was, by far, the prettiest orange cat I’ve ever seen. He was quick, a result of having to feed himself for so many months. It took him years to figure out that meals were a regular thing, and filled out a lot the first year we had him.

In the end he was thin beyond belief, but still proud and noble. His fur was still soft, although it showed the signs of his not being able to wash any more. That last day he sat in my lap until it was time, he purred some, dreamed a little, but mostly slept. Our vet was able to come out to the house, and save him that last car ride. He died in my arms, and we buried him in the back yard next to Felicia, under a bush called a Yesterday-Today-and-Tomorrow, whose purple flowers fade to white with time. I was grateful to have had the time to spend with him that day.

I’ll never forget him. He was a great comfort in rough times, and a good friend always. The other cats know he’s gone and the shifting in dominance has begun. The girls are competing with Smoke, Sandy is sitting this one out for the most part. Thomas had been out of that loop for a while, but nothing had been settled. They have seemed somewhat subdued the last few days.

I miss Thomas already. There seems to be an empty space in the house. After caring for him so long, I feel lost that he’s not there. We have four other friends to make up to… for time spent with Thomas. They haven’t understood what’s been going on, and only know that we are sad. Tina sat on me yesterday as if to say, its OK, I’m still here.

Losing a cat, as I have now several times, always hurts. The pain eventually dulls, but never goes away completely. He was a sweet cat. I loved him deeply. Rest in Peace, my friend, you’ll be missed.