Helping Exotic Animals - Tampa, fl

A lot of people don't realize that right here in Tampa Florida is the world's largest accredited sanctuary for big cats We have about 55 acres here that house all of our animals... They have large, luxurious enclosures. To be accredited sanctuary you need to be inspected by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, demonstrate proper animal care, business ethics and have a strategic business plan and have financial accountability. A lot of times people will get them as pets when they're just little tiny babies and they're so cute and cuddly and what happens is after they mature, which is about a year to two years... sometimes it may take three years for them to get full grown and for their wild nature to kick in and where they realize that they're supposed to live alone and not inside someone's house They're carnivores... They're supposed to eat raw meat... and a lot of times that people will feed them canned cat food or dry cat food ...so their bones and their health suffer greatly because they're not being fed a proper diet and so they end up living and sanctuaries like ours because people can no longer take care of them... they can't afford to take care them... and their behaviors just get a lot more aggressive But a lot of the animals we have here also come from breeding facilities that had been shut down and they also come from other sanctuaries that just can't take care of them This is Arthur. He actually has a brother and a sister that are in the enclosure with him And they were originally used for cub petting at a place in New Jersey... and when the place in New Jersey was shut down they were transferred out to San Antonio Texas and recently the sanctuary that they were at in Texas went bankrupt and they needed to find a new home. We had an anonymous donor that had pictures of them when they were cubs in New Jersey and decided that he wanted to help these Tigers Tigers have very distinct markings and every Tiger has its own markings ...so based on the markings on their faces when they were cubs, we blew up the pictures to what they would be in adult size and then marked and looked and compared each of the photos to each the tigers so that we could identify which were the tigers that this person had petted when they were cubs Ultimately, our end goal here at Big Cat Rescue is to be put out of business... to end the breeding and the exhibition of exotic animals... One of the major things we do here at Big Cat Rescue is we are really into education We also are open every day except on Thursdays to the general public so that they can come on tours and learn about the animals we have here the sanctuary and again the plight of the animals in the wild. We have catlaws.com on our website and we also have petitions that they can sign in the gift shop about the laws that we're trying to get changed right now and they can sign these petitions are we also have the phone where they can call their Senators and their congressmen and say hey you need to sign this bill because this is really important to say the cats in the wild