Wild cats – Page 9 – 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

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

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.'”

Buddy Unravels Astonishing Conspiracy During Ayahuasca Trip

“I see it now!” Buddy exclaimed. “Everything is connected, and we are everything! Who else is hungry?”

PERU — Three hours after ingesting ayahuasca brewed by a jaguar shaman — and two hours after jaguar scouts found him running around the jungle while screaming about extradimensional Teletubbies — Buddy the Cat had unraveled an astonishing conspiracy, sources reported.

The New York-based cat, who had long sought to ingratiate himself with various groups of big cats, usually with disastrous results, finally found kinship with the tolerant jaguars in 2021 when he ventured into the Amazon and impressed the jungle-dwelling felids with his extensive knowledge of novel napping techniques. He also introduced the jaguars to turkey, and in return for his contributions to the jaguar nation, the big cats granted him the jungle name Kinich Bajo, which means “tiny sun-eyed one” in the ancient Yucatec dialect.

jaguarbuddies — Buddy with Canguçu, one of his jaguar buddies.

Buddy returned to the Amazon in October of 2023 to “spend time with my homies” and participate in an ancient jaguar shamanistic ritual involving tea brewed from ayahuasca, the powerful psychedelic used in indigenous ceremonies.

Clearing a small grove in the Amazon rainforest and using rocks to represent people, places and ideas, Buddy was able to find indisputable connections between the Annunaki, the defunct Blockbuster chain of video rental stores and NFL linebacker Barkevious Mingo.

“But where does the Vatican fit in?” Buddy asked, resting his chin on his right paw thoughtfully. “Could it be that Barkevious Mingo is the true pope, and he was speaking ex cathedra when he said Havarti cheese is the food of the gods? Is catkind really ready to accept a divine proclamation on yums that excludes turkey and gouda?”

Buddy and Jaguars — An artist’s impression of Buddy and jaguar elder Yguakina in the Amazon, piecing together great mysteries.

A pair of jaguar minders exchanged worried glances as they approached the tabby cat from both sides.

“Come back to the campfire, Kinich Bajo,” said Xbalanque, the older of the two, using the name jaguar elders had bestowed on the silver tabby. “Your work here can wait.”

Buddy didn’t take his eyes off the complex diagram of rocks, vines and leaves he’d carefully assembled. “Not while I’m so close!”

Xbalanque shook his head. “Where is Elder Yguakina?”

Buddy sighed.

“I had to send him away! He’d become consumed with this ridiculous theory involving Ragnar Lothbrok, the 1973 Pittsburgh Pirates and the Webb telescope,” Buddy said. “I don’t have time for such nonsense!”

As of press time, the Jaguar Nation of Iquitos Amazonia said Buddy was on the verge of a great discovery and will not emerge from the jungle until he’s connected the dots or the psychedelic brew wears off, whichever comes first.

buddy_jaguars2 — Buddy with his jaguar buddies Xibalbá, left, and Ek B’alam.

North Carolina Zoo Welcomes 3 Newborn Sand Cat Kittens

Sand cats are among the smallest felines in the world and live in harsh environments.

It’s baby season at the North Carolina Zoo.

The 500-acre facility in Asheboro announced the birth of three healthy sand cat kittens. The species, felis margarita, is among the tiniest of all felids and is elusive in the wild, able to survive in desert biomes far from water in the African Sahara, as well as the Middle East and parts of Asia.

The kittens were born to first-time mom Sahara, 3, and Cosmo, 9, and remain unnamed for now. The zoo said it will allow the public to vote on their names, with details to be revealed in the near future.

The fortuitous birth of the tiny felines follows the arrival of a giraffe calf and a chimpanzee baby, both male, all within a two-week period in mid-May, the zoo said.

“The mom and triplets are doing well,” zoo staff wrote in an announcement. “The trio are beginning to explore their surroundings in the Desert Habitat. Lucky guests may be able to catch a glimpse of them in the coming days.”

Although sand cats aren’t listed as endangered, scientists don’t have a good handle on their numbers and caution that they may be less populous than estimated. The parents were arranged as a breeding pair for maximum genetic diversity through the Sand Cat Species Survival Plan and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the zoo said.