2004 Annual Report

 

 

Advances:  The biggest advance in our history was this year when we went from “Tampabay’sBest Kept Secret” to a Household Name in the local area. This was due largely to the great media exposure donated by six local Cox Radio Stations. Hillsborough County gave us big green directional signs in 5 locations to direct visitors to our door. For the first year ever, in our 12 year history, we were able to cover all of the sanctuaries expenses from its own income! Thank you everyone! Howard Baskin was able to find a reasonable CPA, Marsha Weiss, and an accountant who completed an audit for our finances for grant writing purposes. This enabled us to apply to the Combined Federal Campaign and to apply to the online version of The Better Business Bureau called Give.org. Christy Anderson launched our first E-zine that carries AdvoCat issues to 5000 subscribers and links to our electronic version of The Big Cat Times. Jamie finished a movie that was nearly five years in the making called “The Big Cat Picture“. This has been widely distributed and 2 minute clips on every species of wild cat has now been added to our website from the movie. We wrote a 20 year plan and began taking steps to reach our goal of eliminating the cause of so much suffering and abuse.

 

Animal Care:  We took in five new tigers and a lion, but had to turn away 114 big cats. We submitted our anesthesia machine parts to have one usable unit rebuilt.  We built 5 new Cat-A-Tats with pools and dens and another multi-acre enclosure with dens and a pool.  Built new dens for Esmerelda, Tobi, and Little Feather and cage enhancements for Sultan, Canyon, Genie, Maharajah, Bailey, Scratch, Baby Cakes and Hercules. Shere Khan and China Doll got a hurricane shelter and we repaired cages that were badly damaged from the four hurricanes in six weeks. The Enrichment team is growing stronger and more professional in their collaboration with others, such as Disney, to help write a comprehensive Enrichment Guide. Operant Conditioning has been led by Jennifer Ruszczyk with marvelous results.

 

The cats are learning their cues and are much easier to handle for check ups. All of the volunteers have retaken their animal care classes this year and have re certified their credentials via testing. Dr. Liz Wynn, DVM has been donating time every week as a liaison to Dr. Stacie Wadsworth, DVM. We began using Truly Nolan for regular flea spraying and for rodent control with marvelous results.

 

Staff and Volunteer Training:  Attended the USDA’s Big Cat Symposium.  Jamie Veronica attended AZA’s weeklong college course, Managing for Success. Jen, Howard and Carole attended and presented Operant Conditioning and Cage Building at The Association of Sanctuaries’ annual conference in Stone Mountain, GA. Susan Mitchell attended Karen Pryor’s Clicker Expo and spent some time with Gary Priest from the San Diego Zoo and quite a bit of time with his top trainer of cats.  Susan also completed the Safe Capture course that some of our staff attended last year. Our volunteer program was overhauled to create an administrative branch for the first time in our history. We now have red through green level requirements on both the Keeper side and the Partner (admin) side and the proud recipients of those levels of accomplishment.

 

We began our first Intern program with three interns. Cathy Mayeski has been screening applicants from around the world and by the year’s end we have had 3 successful graduates from the program and two of them moved here to stay in the volunteer program. By the year’s end we have 6 full time interns and by next year hope to have 12-15. They have come from Wales, Canada, Brazil, Spain, Peru and all across the U.S. The interns work all day, six days a week for three months in exchange for housing and the experience of a lifetime. They are a volunteer force unto themselves and now have their own Den Mother, Gale Ingham who keeps them busy and makes sure th