Pain In The Bud

Mother Of Tigers: From Bottle Babies To Big Cats, She Raised Them And Now She’s Trying To Save Them

It took a tiger swiping at her for her to wake up from the dream of being close to big cats. Now Katherine Lee Guard’s mission is to educate people about the animals and how helping them means keeping a healthy distance.

No one knew Saigon better than Katherine Lee Guard.

When he arrived at the wildlife ranch in Thermal, Calif., as a baby in the mid-90s, it was Guard who stayed up with him at night, bottle-feeding the orphan cub and swaddling him in soft blankets. She was by his side as he grew, tending to his needs, taking walks with him through the desert and scrubland on the compound that was his home.

Then one day the massive Amur tiger turned on her.

“It was just so shocking even though I knew it could happen,” Guard recalled. “I thought I knew but until it happened, I had no idea. It was terrifying and oddly a weird ‘How dare you!’ kind of feeling that came over me. Like ‘How dare you come at me after all I’ve done for you?’ Because I’d raised him, bottle fed him, been up all night with him.”

Guard was equally surprised by her own reaction, which she described as “more indignation than fear,” but it was that indignation that “allowed me to shelve my fear long enough to get away and out of the enclosure.” If Saigon had sensed her fear, his predatory instincts could have overridden the maternal affection he felt for her.

Saigon never tried to kill Guard. If he had, she wouldn’t be here to tell the story. He was merely warning her that he didn’t want her near him that day, and he made sure she got the message.

Katherine and Saigon on a happier day when the massive tiger was in a better mood. Credit: Katherine Lee Guard

Amur tigers, also known as Siberian tigers, are the largest big cat subspecies in the world, topping out at 700 pounds, with males spanning 10 feet from nose to tail.

But the encounter — a growl, a much-less-than full strength swipe and a warning bump — was enough to turn Guard into “a nervous, vomiting wreck” once she extricated herself from the enclosure.

“Getting swatted by a paw, even with sheathed claws, hurts like hell,” Guard told PITB. “I’d feel trounced, disappointed and relieved at the same time. And stupid for being in there with them, although I never would have admitted that to anyone back then.”

That first bad encounter with Saigon, and similar encounters with a lion named Tsavo that Guard had also bottle-fed when he was a cub, planted seeds of doubt in her mind about what she was doing on that California ranch, working with a man who had previously used the big cats in circus performances.

Years earlier when Guard’s mom came to visit her, Guard came out to meet her with baby Saigon in her arms, feeding him from a bottle.

Her mother stopped and took in the scene. “That’s not the baby I imagined for you,” she said flatly.

“I never forgot it,” Guard said.

Later, while caring for a female Bengal named Bombay, Guard had an epiphany. Like so many others who make it their life’s work to be near big cats, she had always been beguiled by the beautiful, powerful and dangerous animals. Looking at Bombay, Guard realized the regal tiger was “totally without pretense,” moving with the purpose and grace of a being self-assured in her existence.

“She was purposeful and unyielding and for the first time I felt separate from her and it didn’t bother me,” Guard said. “It was beautiful to realize that she didn’t need me or anyone else. Had she been given a chance in the wild, she would have flourished. The desire to know her thoughts and be her friend lessened in me because I started to appreciate her for her, not for how she could make me feel. ‘She’s not existing for me! She exists for herself!’ We don’t ‘own’ Bombay. Bombay ‘owns’ herself.”

“It was a light bulb moment, and in hindsight I think it was the beginning of the change in my mindset.”

Guard stopped the practice of going “full contact” with the big cats — meaning caring for them without any barriers or safety measures in place, relying on luck to avoid death or dismemberment — and eventually left the ranch around 2003.

In the two decades since, she’s been focused on educating the public about big cats, supporting conservation efforts and trying to rescue the unfortunate tigers, lions, jaguars, leopards and other wild felids who have the misfortune of living in roadside zoos where they’re sedated and exploited for customer selfies, or living sedentary, unnatural lives in cramped backyards in states like Texas and Florida.

Tsavo the lion, who was rescued from “a shitty private owner,” was another one of Guard’s bottle babies at the sanctuary.

Like many others who have dedicated their lives to helping those animals, Guard is encouraged by the 2022 passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act — but also miffed that it took lawmakers so long, and worried that loopholes in the law will be exploited by people determined to “own” Earth’s endangered apex predators.

The world of big cat handling is a small one, and the people in that world tend to know each other if not always well, then by reputation or in passing. Guard remembers meeting Joe Exotic, the “star” of the infamous Netflix documentary Tiger King, in the late 1990s. Her boss and mentor at the time, Wayne Regan, wanted Exotic to surrender some of his cats to the sanctuary. Regan and Guard had seen “Exotic’s” handiwork up close when they examined some of the tigers another sanctuary had managed to wrangle out of his care. The tigers were stressed, suffered from poor nutrition and were not well cared-for.

Exotic came to the meeting with a sickly, malnourished lion cub as if taunting the pair.

“I hated him immediately,” Guard said.

She was overcome with a desire to “steal the poor malnourished cub he had with him,” but Regan cautioned her against it. Knowing what “Exotic” — real name Joseph Allen Maldonado — is capable of, it’s probably a blessing that she didn’t, but she still thinks of the cub all these years later.

Exotic remains in a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, where he’s serving a 21-year sentence after he was convicted of two counts of trying to hire a hitman to kill his arch-nemesis, big cat sanctuary operator Carole Baskin. He was also convicted of 17 counts of animal abuse, and his name is synonymous with the horror and suffering big cats endure when they’re in the possession of private “owners” and roadside zoo operators.

tigerkingexotic — Joe Allen Maldonado, who styled himself as Joe Exotic, was the subject of the infamous documentary Tiger King detailing his exploitation of big cats and his outlandish criminal activity. Maldonado remains imprisoned in a federal facility after he was convicted of trying to have sanctuary operator Carole Baskin killed.

Big cat advocates lament the fact that the documentary, as popular as it was, spent more time focusing on Maldonado’s eccentricities, Machiavellian maneuvering and manipulation of people in his orbit than it did on the suffering of the animals in his “care,” but it did draw attention to his crimes and the plight of tigers in the US.

“He tortured and killed and exploited so many animals,” Guard told PITB. “He is a coward piece of shit who is right where he should be. He is no ‘Tiger King’ and never should have had a minute of fame.”

She has a similarly low opinion of Kevin “Doc” Antle, another eccentric animal abuser featured in the documentary. Antle has provided big cats and other animals for projects including the Ace Ventura films, a Jungle Book adaptation, a Britney Spears performance and an appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show.

Earlier this year he was convicted of illegal wildlife trafficking in Virginia, where authorities said he tried to buy endangered lion clubs in violation of federal law. He’s racked up almost three dozen USDA violations for mistreatment of animals over the years, has been accused of gassing adult tigers to “make room” for more cubs, and faces a slew of additional charges related to money laundering and the alleged import of wild animals, including a chimpanzee and a cheetah.

antlewiki — Kevin “Doc” Antle, who now calls himself Bhagavan Mahamayavi Antle,

Antle has also raised the ire of animal welfare advocates and conservationists for the controversial practice of breeding ligers — massive cats that are the result of breeding male lions with female tigers — and inbreeding tigers to produce a color morph commonly known as white tigers. While the latter are beautiful, majestic and rare, intentionally trying to breed them often results in cubs with malformations who either die in infancy or live short, brutal lives.

Guard does not regret the time she spent working with big cats on Regan’s ranch, just the naïve way she went about it. Like others who have spent years thinking about how to best protect and save big cat species, she’s come to the conclusion that the majestic felids are best helped — and appreciated — from a distance.

At the ranch, some of the felids were former show animals rescued from the entertainment business. Some, like Saigon, were abandoned young by people who had planned to use them in shows. Others were like Tsavo the lion, who “came from a shitty private owner.”

Regan was a former tiger trainer for circuses but had changed his views on using the animals for entertainment. He “was fastidious about taking care of the cats, very invested in their welfare and had only the best care for them,” she said. The ranch was sprawling, with enrichment items and toys everywhere, as well as a large lake with an island in the middle so the cats — particularly tigers, who are known for their love of water — could swim and play. At night they settled into their own individual habitats, each equipped with smaller pools, entertainment items and bedding.

In addition Wayne, Guard and their volunteers were reluctant to display the cats for anyone, even donors. They felt it would be a betrayal to the animals to be gawked at in a place that had become a haven for them.

Regan had learned the business from a man named Ron Whitfield, who remains active in the big cat community as the large carnivore curator at the San Francisco Zoo and trained animals for 30 years at the now-defunct Marine World in San Francisco.

“The business is so small that word gets around and Wayne, and Ron too, were known as good people to care for unwanted animals,” Guard said.

Guard and Saigon.

Tsavo as an adult.

Baby Saigon

These days, Guard cares for small cats too as a caretaker and feeder of stray cat colonies in her California neighborhood. It’s a reminder of the good people can do in their own backyards, and of the need that exists in a country where some 800,000 unwanted felines are euthanized every year despite Herculean efforts to push spaying and neutering. (Those efforts have been very successful, and euthanizations of cats and dogs are only a fraction of the millions they were just 15 years ago, but the fact that so many unwanted animals are still killed illustrates the enormity of the problem.)

Mostly, she wants people to know that the idea of having a big cat for a companion, or even living in something resembling harmony with them, “is a fool’s paradise.” Luck is the only determining factor in whether a handler lives or, as Siegfried and Roy can attest, suffers life-altering injuries from accidentally triggering the ever-present predatory instinct of tigers, lions and other big cats like jaguars and leopards.

They are, after all, the planet’s apex predators, hyper-carnivores designed by nature with the most deadly weapons of any extant animal.

Guard says she hopes the practice of keeping big cats truly ends after the current generation of panthera “pets” — those grandfathered in under the Big Cat Public Safety Act — pass on. And she hopes that young people who are as “spellbound and mesmerized” by the spectacular felids as she was don’t follow her lead and endanger their lives, which is why she’s brutally honest about her own experiences and makes no pretense about benefiting from any factor other than luck.

“It’s been a long road for me to go from there to here,” she said. “I’m glad I can recognize my mistakes and hope I can prevent others from doing the same. I don’t know why people are drawn to do dangerous things but for me I didn’t think about the danger because I just wanted to be close to my cats.”

She understands the allure, but always comes back to the same conclusion: humans and big cats are not meant to live side by side.

“The cost is too great if something goes wrong,” she said. “And something always goes wrong given enough time.”

Did you like this story? Read some of PITB’s other long-form journalism and essays:

Government Biologist Who Shot Cats Called Their Corpses ‘Party Favors’ In Email Celebrating Their Deaths
Ode To Cosmo: The Best Dog I’ve Known
Demon of Champawat: The Man-Eating Tiger And The Hunter Who Put An End To Her Bloody Reign

Adoption Ad Warns Cat Will ‘Own You, Your House, Everything You Hold Dear’

Quinn the cat has “the uncanny ability to make people feel unwelcome in her presence!”

Quinn the cat lives separate from feline genpop, she doesn’t suffer fools and she’s got a well-documented habit of smacking people, cats and dogs.

The infamously disagreeable feline is up for adoption and the shelter where she lives has been up front about her unique personality, saying she might do well with a misanthrope who would appreciate Quinn’s dislike of any visitors and intolerance for anyone who doesn’t directly serve her.

“Tired of visitors coming to your house? Adopt Quinn! She has an uncanny ability to make people feel unwelcome in her presence!” shelter staff wrote in Quinn’s adoption post.

She’ll tolerate her caretaker, but just barely, staff at the Washington County Humane Society in Maryland joked.

Yet they’re confident there’s a home for Quinn, insisting that “surely there’s someone out there who would appreciate her icy stare and her sudden smacks!”

Of course Quinn could blossom into a happy, sweet cat once she’s living in her forever home and she realizes she’s not going back to the shelter or the streets. Most cats do poorly in shelters where fear and stress overwrite their usual personalities. Even the most outgoing, sweet cat can appear depressed and antisocial when locked in a cage most of the time, without people to love them, play with them and make them feel safe.

Quinn’s direct adoption page (scroll down to adoptable cats) says she’s three years old and wasn’t claimed by her owner, so who knows what kind of traumas she may have endured in her short life?

Quinn currently lives in the shelter’s office where she “rules with an iron paw.” Anyone interested in adopting her should ask for her by name, the shelter said. Contact the shelter at the link above or by calling 301-733-2060.

Cat: ‘No Study Time For You, Human!’

When cats demand attention they can be relentless!

I’m sure the behavior in this video, of a cat absolutely determined not to let her human get a second of studying in, is familiar to everyone who has the privilege of serving a feline:

@talelindblom

my studybuddy 🥹 part 2 #exam #catsoftiktok #fyp #nursingstudent

♬ original sound – TALE LINDBLOM

The cat grabs at the pen, tries to chew on it, covers the book with her body, nibbles on the pages and plays pretty much every trick in the feline book to get her human to stop what she’s doing and engage in some good old Cat Time.

Or more bluntly, she’s saying: “NO STUDY, HUMAN! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!”

I never gave much thought to how students fare with cats but I know writing by hand is pretty much out of the question for me. Bud just won’t let me do it. Either he’s trying to bite the pen or he’s swatting at it with his paws, making my normally neat handwriting look like that of a deranged person demanding ransom or the work of someone stupidly drunk.

I’ve got a tradition of sketching scenes on birthday cards and other things I send to my nieces by snail mail, and Bud must be secured in another room before I can even attempt it.

Same deal with music, unfortunately. If I’ve got a guitar in my hands, little dude tries to cut in with a blazing, discordant solo of his own. Cat claws and guitar strings do not mix. If I’m using my synthesizer, Bud decides we’re going to do a duet by walking across the keyboard and yowling.

I’ve actually sat hunched at my computer for hours trying to stitch together guitar solos from several different takes because they were going swimmingly until Mr. Bud cut in with a paw and a claw, and trying to fix rhythm tracks that were perfect until Buddy the Destroyer decided 4/4 should become 5/8 or a particular chord progression should be interrupted with an accidental bit of guitar dubstep. Thank God for non-destructive digital editing in modern music production! Musicians in the days of analog multitracks must have had to put their felines under lock and key before attempting to record anything.

Do your cats stop you from doing stuff? What are their methods?

Cat Domestication Was The Start Of A Beautiful Friendship

Domestication’s real goal: to make cats cuddly as well as great mousers.

Cats have been doing things their way since the very beginning.

Unlike literally every other domesticated animal, cats were not domesticated by humans. They did it to themselves.

As if that didn’t make them unique enough, they lay claim to another major distinction: they’re the only species of obligate carnivores to undergo domestication in the entire history of human existence.

That explains why cats, more than any other animal that depends on humans, so closely resemble the wild animals they were before signing up for the good life of naps, warmth, endless rodents to hunt and free food from their new human friends.

In a new essay for The Conversation, evolutionary biologist Jonathan Losos, author of The Age of Cats: From the Savanna to Your Sofa, notes new DNA analysis settles the question of where cats came from once and for all.

Domestic cats are descended from North African wildcats, specifically the species felis sylvestris lybica. Unlike dogs, who underwent telltale physical transformations when they evolved from wolves, house cats “appear basically indistinguishable from wildcats.”

“In fact,” Losos writes, “only 13 genes have been changed by natural selection during the domestication process. By contrast, almost three times as many genes changed during the descent of dogs from wolves.”

While the change in genetics that happen with domestication left cats pretty much as they were physically, the process made dramatic changes in the feline brain, reducing regions governing fear and expanding those related to social behavior. The result? The major difference between house cats and their wildcat ancestors is disposition.

In other words, domestication made cats cuddly.

Notably, felis sylvestris lybica had to be pretty friendly in the first place, as well as bold and driven by the now-legendary feline curiosity to risk padding into human settlements with their bright lights, strange smells, open flames and the two-legged giants striding around them.

They didn’t have a way of negotiating or signaling their intent. They couldn’t say: “Hey guys, we’re here to kill and eat the tasty rodents who have been giving you problems by chowing down on your yums, but we don’t want your yums for ourselves. Plants are disgusting!”

So they had to demonstrate their usefulness, prove their worth, and enjoy the fruits of it by curling up in front of warm fires or on human laps.

That explains why it was the African wildcat that became a human companion species and not European wildcats, whom Losos notes are often “hellaciously mean” in interactions with people, even if they’re raised around humans when they’re young. It was also a matter of being in the right place at the right time, as nascent human civilization took root in the Fertile Crescent.

But ultimately, just like cats decided to domesticate themselves and didn’t really bother to consult us about it, so too do they bend us to their will with an entire repertoire of manipulative behavior, from solicitation purrs to incessant meowing and having a talent for looking their cutest when they want something.

While we may think we set the rules and parameters of our relationship with the furry little ones, as Losos notes, “cats usually train us more than we train them.”

Read the whole thing here:

Feline evolution: How house cats and humans domesticated each other

Buddy To Appear In Upcoming Episode of HGTV’s Box Hunters

Buddy the Cat tours a trio of elegant box homes in the new season of HGTV’s popular series Box Hunters.

NEW YORK — Will he go with the “modest” 32-room castle, the manor with elegant cardboard balconies or the minimalist keep with high walls and strong fortifications?

Viewers of HGTV’s hit show, Box Hunters, will have to tune in on Wednesday, Dec. 13 to find out!

The episode will air on fHGTV, (Feline HGTV), the network’s cat-centric sister station, and will follow Buddy the Cat as his box estate agent shows him three unique properties.

“Buddy the Cat is a young professional whose hobbies include taking over the world, gorging on turkey and getting high on catnip,” the narrator says in the episode’s opening sequence. “He’s looking for a property that will fit in his living room, can accommodate a nuclear bunker and serve as a headquarters for planning world domination, all while providing pleasant spaces to entertain guests. Can he find a box house that will fit his criteria? Find out in this episode of Box Hunters!”

Like many cats who are featured on the show, Buddy has a predetermined list of features he considers absolutely necessary, including a complete lack of doors, no baths, and quiet napping chambers.

“It has to have a certain je ne sais quoi as a dwelling meant for me and not just some regular cat, of course,” Buddy said. “But it needn’t be unnecessarily elaborate.”

Patches, the box estate agent, told Buddy they’d “start with something modest” while leading him to a towering box castle with a grand staircase and wide front entrance.

Buddy's Box Castles — A modest box castle design toured by Buddy the Cat.

“I like the understated design of this one,” Buddy said. “The ground floor entrance leads directly into the Grand Napping Chamber with smaller, more private napping accommodations accessible from the main chamber.”

Patches nodded.

“And you can see here, the litter box room is filled with all the modern amenities, including a pad that catches stray litter and a cardboard floor designed to look like marble,” she said. “Stepping out into the grand foyer, we have ample storage space in the adjoining closets for all your toys, your catnip stash and your weapons. It’s even got a Roomba garage!”

A second design, which Patches labeled “more of a classically styled castle,” features a pair of ground-level entrances, several balconies, and “ample space for walking the upper parapets.”

“The wrought cardboard filigrees are fabulous,” Buddy said, running a paw along a faux window where dozens of holes had been punched through to create a screen effect.

Finally they toured a minimalist keep that filled most of Buddy’s requirements but didn’t have all the bells and whistles.

“The good news is, it’s significantly less than your budget of 50 cans of wet food,” Patches said. “You’ll have cans left over for renovations and to customize the space. And moving along here past the master naproom, this doorway leads out to the central courtyard. This is a really nice space for entertaining, especially in the summer months when it’s warm out and you and your friends might want to dine outside on kibble, turkey, mouse or whatever your preference may be.”

Catch the full episode on Wednesday, Dec. 13 at 7:30 p.m.!