Tigers – Page 3 – Pain In The Bud

A Quiet Place Day One: Are ‘Service Cats’ A Real Thing?

Service animals and emotional support animals are not the same thing.

A Quiet Place: Day One stars Lupita Nyong’o as Samira, a terminally ill woman, and Joseph Quinn as her nurse, Eric.

But it’s the third main cast member — a feline named Frodo — who’s been hailed as the surprise star of the film, which one reviewer called “a love letter to cat owners.”

Nyong’o’s Sam has been given the equivalent of a death sentence with her aggressive cancer diagnosis, but when the nightmarish creatures who play the antagonists of the Quiet Place franchise arrive, Sam fights for her life with her trusty “service cat” by her side.

“You can’t have a cat in here,” the clerk at a bodega tells Sam early in the film, before she fixes him with a no-nonsense stare and flatly declares: “He’s a service cat.”

Frodo the Cat — The adorable Frodo, co-star of A Quiet Place: Day One.

Service cats: Fact or fiction?

So are service cats a real thing?

Unfortunately, no. In the US, only dogs and miniature horses can be registered as service animals, and that’s by law. The latter are more rare, but horses labeled emotional support animals are no more official than an emotional support llama.

You’ve probably heard stories or seen photos of people trying to take other animals into places they’d normally never be allowed. In 2019, a woman decided to push the boundaries by taking a miniature horse onto a domestic flight, forcing passengers to share extremely limited space with the olfactorily potent, skittish animal. She even scolded social media users who didn’t get the horse’s pronouns “correct.” (They’re she/her, by the way. We’re not making this up.)

https://x.com/barstoolsports/status/1167440007956746240

https://x.com/tsturk8/status/1167472085918240768

The woman, who says she needs the horse because she suffers from PTSD, told Omaha, Nebraska’s KMTV that the managers of a grocery store allegedly violated her rights by asking her to leave rather than allow her to march a horse through a place where people buy food and its operators are required to follow Department of Health rules.

“I was treated so poorly and the manager’s responses when I followed up were poor,” she said. “They are going to be hearing from the Department of Justice and I’m definitely going to be pursuing legal means as well.”

In 2023, a man tried to take a “service alligator” to a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park. Stadium security weren’t buying it and he was turned away, but not before other fans snapped photos of the attempt. In Nevada, a man who had his USDA license revoked for “multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act” argued that authorities couldn’t confiscate his 10 tigers because he claimed they are emotional support animals.

“My doctor has written that she feels that the tigers are beneficial to my psychological well-being and so therefore I got what the law requires,” Karl Mitchell told KTNV, an ABC affiliate in Las Vegas.

Emotional support tiger — An emotional support tiger depicted in a Reddit photoshop contest for the most ridiculous “service animals.” Maybe some ambitious dreamer will cook up a service elephant or an emotional support bison.

Since then the FAA and Department of Transportation have issued new rules clarifying emotional support horses, peacocks, flying squirrels, parrots and other animals are not allowed on planes, prompting one flight attendant to quip that “The days of Noah’s Ark in the sky are over.”

That, however, has not put a dent in the confusion over what constitutes a service animal versus an emotional support animal, and what rights people have when it comes to bring their furry (or scaly, or feathered) friends into public and private spaces.

Although we’re happy to see Nyong’o in her first lead role since 2019’s freaky horror thriller Us, unfortunately A Quiet Place: Day One is almost certain to contribute to that confusion with its fictional “service cat” character.

A service animal and an emotional support animal are not the same thing

First, there’s an important distinction between a service animal and an emotional support animal.

Service animals can only be dogs or miniature horses, and must be trained. People who depend on service animals can train them themselves, but the animal must meet specific needs, like guiding the blind or vision-impaired.

Emotional support animals, by contrast, are not trained, certified or “official” in any capacity. Anyone can adopt or buy an animal and call it an “emotional support animal.”

Emotional support alligator — A Phillies fan’s “emotional support alligator.” The stadium turned him and his carnivorous apex predator companion down. Credit: Howard Eskin/X

Unfortunately due to the confusion involving service animals vs ESAs, predatory sites have popped up online promising to “officially register” ESAs for a fee.

In addition to charging for something that doesn’t exist, the proprietors of those sites also tell people they can take their “officially registered” support animals into places normally off limits to pets, like stores and restaurants. Some sites offer consultations with alleged mental health professionals who will “diagnose” customers remotely and write letters on the customer’s behalf.

Abrea Hensley with miniature horse — Abrea Hensley with her miniature horse, Flirty, in an aquarium. Hensley’s social media accounts document all the places she goes with the animal.

Those sites operate similar to the numerous “buy a star” sites that claim celestial objects can be officially owned. Like their emotional support animal “registry” counterparts, the star sale sites offer official-looking paperwork, but they’re selling something that can’t legally be sold, and the certificates are legally and practically meaningless.

Buying a “certification” won’t make your cat a service feline, and contrary to how they’re portrayed in the movie, calling a pet an emotional support animal does not allow you to bring it anywhere you like.

For legal purposes, there’s only one perk to be had by claiming an emotional support animal: under the Fair Housing Act, landlords generally cannot refuse tenants who have emotional support animals. The act specifies that allowing emotional support animals is limited by “reasonable accommodations.” That means a dog or a cat is okay, but you can’t keep an animal that poses a danger to your neighbors, negatively impacts their quality of life, or requires the landlord to make major and costly alterations.

The general trend in recent years has involved curbing the limits of emotional support animals, a trend that appears likely to continue as more people abuse the privilege, burdening other members of the public by insisting they must silently endure the inconvenience, potential allergic reactions, sanitary concerns and practical problems caused by bringing animals into spaces that are not designed to accommodate them.

While we’re certainly sympathetic to pet owners — this blog wouldn’t exist if we were not — the fact is that the more people abuse societal boundaries with emotional support animals, the more difficult it makes things for people who have legitimate service dogs and rely on them to navigate life and maintain their independence.

Note: This post has been updated to further distinguish between service animals and emotional support animals. An earlier version contained a paragraph with potentially confusing phrasing.

h/t Susan Mercurio for pointing out that emotional support animals are coveted by the Fair Housing Act

Big Cats In US Zoos Are Miserable, Mistreated, Inbred And Unhealthy, Report Says

Roadside zoos persist despite recent law changes, but even the best zoos fail to provide adequate facilities and enrichment for big cats, the report found.

The Amur tigress at Bearsdley Zoo is the lone occupant of her enclosure, which is large by the zoo’s standards, outfitted with a pool, toys and other enrichment, but small compared to what her natural range would be.

When I visited last summer, I spent the better part of an hour watching her pace the perimeter of her enclosure, walking in an endless loop as if in a daze, never stopping, altering her stride or reacting to anything.

But what made me realize how bad captivity really is for big cats was what I saw at the Smithsonian National Zoo, a well-funded world class facility. The tigers there have two outdoor enclosures with a topographic design: they’re vertical spaces separated into tiers, with large trees and narrow “caves” for shelter from the elements. Both enclosures are surrounded by wide moats that ring the perimeter just inside the security fencing.

Smithsonian Bengal tiger exhibit — One of two similar Bengal tiger habitats in the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington. Credit: ZooChat

It was feeding time on a hot summer day. Lionesses chowed down on large slabs of meat and licked blocks of ice, but the lone male tiger next door was pacing in a circle. He paced and paced, covering the same 10 to 12 feet, ignoring his food. I watched him for a long time. His behavior was a clear sign of zoochosis.

If a tiger in a national accredited zoo — where an entire team of keepers and caretakers is responsible for enrichment and welfare — suffers from clear signs of captivity-induced distress, what chance do tigers in other facilities have?

When we think of big cats suffering in captivity, we think of the roadside zoos where the Joe Exotics and Doc Antles of the world exploit them for financial gain, drug them, force them to take selfies with visitors and keep them in cruel conditions. But a new report from Born Free USA goes beyond roadside zoos and says big cat arrangements, even in the best zoos, are inappropriate, unhealthy and demoralizing for the animals.

“Unable to escape the crowds of humans, unable to follow some of their fundamental urges such as hunting and roaming over large distances, unable to fulfil their social needs – whether that be living solitarily or forming a pride with others – big cats show us their mental anguish by adopting abnormal behaviors,” reads the report [PDF], Clawing at the Cages. “These behaviors, known as stereotypies, manifest in obsessive pacing. Some big cats spend most of their days tracing the same, short, tedious route around their enclosures. This behavior is a recognized sign of stress, and only documented in captive animals.”

Jaguar — A captive jaguar. Credit: Yigithan/Pexels

The wild lives of animals like tigers are fundamentally at odds with the concept of zoos. In the wild, tigers range up to 50 miles in a single day, occupying vast ranges. Male tigers protect their home ranges, their mates and their cubs from other males as well as threats of all sorts.

That sort of lifestyle, which is hard-coded into their DNA, is not compatible with a guest-oriented operation in which habitats are designed primarily to give people the best view of the animals.

Lions might have it slightly better, though that’s arguable. As a social species they can interact with each other and they tend to have larger enclosures, but zoos rarely group animals according to their preferred family units or prides, instead matching individuals according to breeding plans as part of conservation efforts.

Yet even the conservation aspect is iffy, according to Born Free USA. Because of restrictions on “importing” animals and a population that is descended from just a handful of big cats, inbreeding is rampant. There’s a lack of scientific research on the captive zoo-held population, but the authors cite a 1983 study that found “six animals out of the approximately 1,000 Siberian tigers held in zoos in 1983 were responsible for 69.4% of the founder representation of the living population at that time. 70% of the population had a positive inbreeding
coefficient.”

Because little has been done to remedy that genetic bottleneck, “genetic viability remains low, and inbreeding of big cats in zoos can only have increased in the intervening years since these studies,” the report states.

Inbred cats suffer more health problems, don’t live as long and are much more susceptible to birth defects.

shallow focus photography of cheetah — A cheetah. Credit: Magda Ehlers/Pexels

Despite the passing of the Big Cat Public Safety Act, Born Free USA’s report notes, roadside zoos still exist, and many of them have simply ignored the new laws because their operators know inspectors are overworked and lack manpower. Years can elapse between inspections, even at roadside zoos operated by serial offenders with long histories of keeping animals in abysmal conditions.

For example, Single Vision of Melrose, Florida — which bills itself as a “conservation” facility — openly flaunts its mistreatment of big cats with enormously popular video content from “Safari Sammie” on Youtube, TikTok and Instagram, despite the fact that it’s been the subject of dozens of violations and has an ignominious record when it comes to the health of its big cats. The facility was charged with 20 violations of animal rights laws in the previous two years, and has had multiple cases of animals dying due to neglect, yet continues to sell “experiences” in which “guests” can interact with heavily sedated tigers, jaguars, cheetahs and other wild cats.

In her videos, “Safari Sammie” — an employee of Single Vision — is routinely seen interacting directly with the apex predators, treating them like house cats and creating dangerous situations.

Other roadside zoos and animal “experience” operators continue to intentionally inbreed big cats to create “exotic” white tigers as well as ligers, tigons and other hybrids that aren’t found in the wild but are big attractions.

Overall, the report found:

Zoos fail to provide adequate environments for big cats, including lack of space, lack of ability to hide from public view, and the regular practice of locking big cats in tiny night quarters during the hours when zoos are
closed. The latter often results in big cats spending the vast majority of their time significantly confined.
Social and behavioral needs are not met in zoos. For example, solitary big cats are often forced to live with conspecifics, and social big cats are prevented from creating natural prides. Big cats are prevented from
hunting live prey – a behavior fundamental to them – while often housed alongside prey animals who also suffer stress from being forced to live near predators.
Inbreeding of big cats has become commonplace due to limited genetic diversity among captive populations, as well as unethical and deliberate inbreeding of color morphs such as white tigers and lions,
resulting in significant health issues for the cats involved.
Due to the inbreeding of big cats in zoos, as well as their habituation to humans, big cats kept in zoos are generally not candidates for release to the wild. As such, extensive and ongoing breeding programs simply serve to ensure that zoos remain “stocked” with these animals.
Monitoring of data on big cats in captivity is incomplete, with significant numbers of individuals disappearing from studbooks – the databases ostensibly responsible for tracking living big cats in captive facilities.
The licensing system intended to implement the Animal Welfare Act in the United States only achieves superficial monitoring of big cats in zoos, due in part to its risk-based assessment protocols as well as lack of meaningful
information in reporting that would allow effective public understanding and external expert oversight.
Despite the introduction of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in the U.S. in early 2023, some facilities continue to engage in dangerous activities with big cats, both in violation of, and in compliance with the new law.
Zoos around the world have killed healthy big cats due to overcrowding and lack of perceived usefulness to breeding programs. Other healthy big cats have been killed when human error or enclosure failure allowed their escape, or when attacked by conspecifics in their enclosures.
Due to all the issues above, and others, the overall health and welfare of big cats is compromised in zoos. This results in high mortality (particularly in infants), and recognizable signs of stress in the form of significant occurrences of stereotypic behaviors.

The report includes detailed anecdotes of typical problems in captive situations involving jaguars, lions, tigers and cheetahs, documents persistent problems with habitat design and security, and outlines loopholes and other problems with existing laws, which still don’t go far enough to ensure some of the world’s most iconic apex predators aren’t exploited and forced to endure lifelong misery.

You can find the report’s landing page, with links to a petition, a summary and the full text here.

The UK’s Big Cats Are Just Like UFOs, Existing In Blurry Photos And Human Imagination

Blurry photos and fleeting encounters keep the legend of big cats in the UK alive. Could there be leopards, pumas and other large cats roaming the countryside?

For all the advances in optics and camera technology over the last 20 years alone, there are two kinds of people who love blurry, low-resolution footage: UFO enthusiasts and people who are convinced the UK is like a cold, rainy Africa with big cats lurking in every bush and field.

To be a member of either group you’ve got to shut down critical thinking faculties, suspend disbelief and put faith in the highly improbable. (Or the impossible when it comes to people who insist little green men are zipping across the night sky in sleek ships that defy all we know about physics and aerodynamics.)

The UK’s big cat believers claim the country is home to a thriving native population of large felids. Some of them think they’re “panthers,” not specifying which species of cat they think is out there, while others claim jaguars, leopards or tigers are prowling the English countryside, spotted only fleetingly at the edges of fields or in the brush, and only by people who own two-decade-old Nokia flip phones with rudimentary cameras.

They believe a native, breeding population not only exists, but for centuries has eluded capture and avoided leaving compelling evidence.

Cheetah in London — “Pardon me, mate, could you point me toward Aldersgate Street?”

The phantom cats have remarkable stealth abilities. They’ve never tripped a trail camera or appeared in a single frame of CCTV footage. Not a single tree marked for territory, not a single pile of cow bones picked clean by giant barbed tongues, not a single clump of panthera dung. Not even a hungry cub drawn into a village by the smell of barbecue on a summer night.

The reported sightings say more about human capacity for imagination — and how poor we are at estimating size over distance — than they do about the crypto-pumas and melanistic tigers some people swear they’ve seen.

When alleged big cats are spotted in the UK, they’re always seen fleetingly and from afar. When witnesses try to confirm what they’ve seen, the animals are gone.

“I was coming up to Jolly Nice from Oxford at around 7.50pm and the car in front of me was travelling at a steady pace. I looked to the verge of the other side of the road because I saw a bright pair of eyes low down. Upon further inspection, I suddenly realised there was a large outline of a low and stocky cat that was huge.”

That’s the testimony of a UK man who told the Stroud Times, a local newspaper, that he encountered a big cat a few minutes before 8 p.m. on Friday in Nailsworth, a town of about 5,600 people a little more than 100 miles west of London. His description mirrors that of others who say they’ve spotted large felids, mostly in the UK’s countryside and small villages.

Small Cats Looking Big — Photograph from a previous “big cat sighting.” It’s typical of the photos that surface with claims of leopards and pumas stalking the countryside. Blurred details and digital zoom make it difficult to gauge distance and scale.

The story’s headline reads: “Big cat expert’s verdict: beast spotted was a leopard.”

The expert in question is Rick Minter, an amateur biologist who has made UK big cat legends into something of a cottage industry by publishing books, hosting a podcast and frequently speaking to newspapers about the phenomenon. It’s not clear how Minter decided the animal in Friday’s sighting was a “black leopard,” but he’s said in previous interviews that he believes most alleged big cat sightings in the UK are leopards, with pumas accounting for most of the others.

Neither animal is native to Europe. Pumas range from South America to the American northwest and midwest, with isolated populations in places like Florida. Leopards are native to Africa and Asia, with ranges that overlap with lions on the former continent and tigers on the latter, mostly in India.

Puma at Buckingham Palace — “I’m originally from San Diego, actually, but the expat life suits me and the British are very tasty.”

Some have floated the possibility that the mysterious felids are escaped pets who have successfully adjusted to the countryside. Minter says the evidence points to breeding populations.

If there are thriving populations, the cats would need to exist in numbers, with at least 50 on the extreme low end. If they’re escaped pets, the authorities would know.

Unlike the US, where big cat ownership was banned in the vast majority of states even before the recent Big Cat Public Safety Act was passed, owning a massive carnivore slash killing machine isn’t illegal in the UK. But owners have to register their animals, seek approval for the habitats and enclosures they’ve built, and submit to annual inspection.

There have been a handful of escapes over the decades and each time the authorities were able to capture or kill the animals, often tracking them via livestock kills. Pet tigers and leopards might be dangerous, but they’re still at a disadvantage compared to their wild brethren, meaning they go for the easy, guaranteed kills when they’re hungry. Nothing’s easier than a docile farm animal that’s never seen a big cat.

Tiger at a pub — “Oi, wanna have a pint and watch Man U vs Arsenal on the telly?”

More recently, big cat hunters in the UK have tried to find more compelling evidence than a couple of blurry photographs of house cats out for a stroll. They’ve touted suspicious-looking pug marks, and in August 2022 found black fur on a barbed wire fence. According to the believers, a UK lab confirmed the fur belonged to a leopard, but there was no chain of custody, no documentation of how the sample was found and handled. Big cat experts remain skeptical.

Our research team carried out field work in fife over the weekend off the back of a recently sighted big cat 😊 #fife #BigCats #bigcatsightings #bigcatsscotland #bigcatsuk pic.twitter.com/CeUjEXJto0

— Big Cat Sightings In Scotland (@BCSI_Scotland) October 24, 2022

Indeed, Oxford’s Egil Droge, a wildlife conservationist, points out that in places where big cats live, you don’t have to go hunting for evidence. It’s everywhere.

“I’ve worked with large carnivores in Africa since 2007 and it’s obvious if big cats are around. You would regularly come across prints of their paws along roads. The rasping sound of a leopard’s roar can be heard from several kilometres,” Droge wrote, noting that leopards in particular are not discriminating about what they kill and leave ample evidence of their handiwork when they’ve hunted.

Still, as improbable as the sightings are, the big cat enthusiasts of the UK have one up on UFO enthusiasts and hunters of cryptics like Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Jersey Devil: the creatures they’re looking for actually exist and may surprise us yet.

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.”

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An Extraordinary Tiger Mourned His Longtime Mate, Then Stepped Up To Raise Their 4 Cubs

A Bengal tiger mourned his longtime mate and then did something extraordinary, replacing her as their cubs’ primary caregiver.

The magnificent tiger in the photo above is officially called P-243, but he’s affectionately known to locals as The Hulk of Panna.

He made his home about a decade ago in the Panna Tiger Reserve, a 210-square-mile national park in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, home to more than 72 million people.

What makes him special, aside from his massive frame, is the fact that when his longtime mate died and left four of their cubs to fend for themselves, the Hulk stepped up and became a full-time dad.

The mom, known as P-213-32, had previously given birth to a litter of four cubs, but only two survived. As far as the rangers at Panna National Park could tell, the Hulk and P-213 had been together for years. The new cubs were their second litter.

The Hulk “was not seen with any other tigress,” the rangers wrote in a report.

On May 12, 2021, park rangers were concerned when P-213’s radio collar began transmitting potential mortality signals, alerting them to the fact that the tigress hadn’t moved for about six hours. The rangers observed her from a distance, then dispatched a team of elephant scouts to take a closer look.

matriarchofpanna — T1 (tigress 1) was known as the matriarch of the Panna Tiger Reserve. After poachers nearly wiped out the entire population of tigers almost 15 years ago, T1 and another tigress were the last two female tigers. T1 herself gave birth to 13 cubs and today the reserve has more than 80 of the endangered big cats living within its boundaries. Credit: RS Murthy

The use of elephants by experienced riders in India to monitor tigers is as ancient as it is ingenious — while virtually every other animal in a tiger’s habitat gives the big cats a wide berth, elephants and tigers have an unspoken mutual agreement, a kind of wild non-aggression pact. That’s because as massive and powerful creatures who move in packs, elephants are too much trouble for tigers to bother with. Unlike their lion cousins who do hunt elephants opportunistically, tigers don’t form prides and even if elephants were solitary animals and easier to hunt, even a mother and her hungry cubs — let alone a single tiger — can’t eat that much meat. They also can’t transport the kill to safer dining spots the way they do with their typical prey.

So tigers and elephants tend to do little more than acknowledge each other’s presence, and the tigers have learned that humans riding on elephants aren’t hostile.

The elephant rangers who got close to P-213 realized the tigress had a swollen right forelimb and they made the decision to sedate her. For the next two nights, field veterinarians accompanied the rangers and administered painkillers and antibiotics. The treatment seemed to work, the swelling was reduced and the tigress was ambulatory if still sluggish, but she died less than a week later.

Her death “came as a shock to all of us,” the team wrote. “A beautiful tigress and a caring mother, [her death] left her four cubs alone.”

Frustratingly, a postmortem and lab analysis of her blood didn’t turn up any obvious cause of death.

P-213’s death “was itself heavy loss to bear but now the major worry was her four orphaned cubs,” the ranger team wrote. The cubs were last seen with her on May 10, about 11 days before she died. The two previous days they’d been spotted sharing a kill with their mother, and rangers reported the cubs looked strong and healthy.

A few days later, after an exhaustive search by five elephant riders and 50 park rangers, a ground team found the cubs “healthy and active and [did not appear] hungry or stressed.” They also spotted their father, the Hulk, nearby.

What happened next was extraordinary.

After park rangers cremated P-213, the Hulk approached the site about an hour after the last people cleared out. The next day, rangers observed him “sitting for long hours at the place where P-213 died.”

They also saw the dedicated mate and father calling out softly as he looked for his cubs, three males and a female who were about seven months old at the time.

A few days later, the Hulk successfully hunted a sambhar, a type of deer, and shared the kill with his cubs according to a local news report. Then on June 6, the Hulk was spotted feeding the kids again after he killed a cow.

“For the entire day the tiger remained in the area but did not eat the kill. This was unexpected behaviour from a tiger and the PTR management deployed ground staff deployed to find out the reason,” the news report said. “The team found that the area where the tiger killed the cow is the territory of four tiger cubs. This male tiger, known as P243, is their father. The cubs had lost their mother a month ago.”

hulkofpanna — The Hulk prowls his territory. Credit: Sanjeev Siva

As if he hadn’t done enough to earn “dad of the year” honors for his species, the Hulk was even spotted playing with his offspring.

“After the death of the tigress, we located these cubs and placed camera traps in the area,” said U.K. Sharma, the director of Panna Tiger Reserve. “We found that the tiger visits these cubs regularly, and his behavior shows that he is not a threat to the cubs. We have seen the cubs playing with the male tiger and sharing kills.”

The team at Panna reserve continued watching closely and got to see the cubs flourish in the care of their dad. There were moments of uncertainty when rangers went days without seeing the cubs or finding their pug marks, but their fears were always put to rest by trail cameras that captured images of the Hulk with his kids in tow, resting with them in favorite spots and sharing meals with them as he taught them to hunt and survive.

Because male tigers typically aren’t known for nourishing behavior and their traditional role is to defend their territory to keep their mates and cubs safe, the Panna reserve’s staff were ready to step in if things began to look dicey. They never had to. A follow-up report about eight months later, when the cubs were healthy and fast-growing 15-month-olds, affirmed the team’s earlier decision to stay hands-off and let the Hulk do his thing.

“Surviving the wild without mother tigress is no mean feat but surprises do happen,” the rangers wrote. “And these become experiences, practices and lessons for the future. The lesson learnt is ‘[the] best thing one can do when tiger cubs are growing is to let them grow. Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.'”