Tribute to Trucha Tiger

Female Siberian/Bengal Tiger Hybrid   DOB 1993-8/29/2009

 

With one final breath she lifted out of the cancer ridden body that had once been Trucha the tigress. She had literally been bred to death. In the wild she would have had cubs once every three or four years as she spent the time in between raising her family and teaching them all about what it means to be a tiger. In captivity tigers are bred two to four times a year because there is a huge demand for cute, cuddly cubs.

 

Breeders, like the notorious Robert Baudy of Savage Kingdom, who used Trucha until he lost his USDA license, will purposely inbreed their cats to try and produce the white coat color that accompanies the genetic defect. The cubs can only be used for petting sessions, photo ops and other pay-to-play schemes for a month or two before they are too big to handle. Many die from the rough handling, being dropped, and being starved and having diarrhea induced to keep them small. Meanwhile their mothers are already pregnant with the next litter of cubs to be exploited.

 

Trucha had just taken her last breath, but I felt like the weight on my chest was such that I would never again be able to breathe. I suspect that those who stood with me, Dr. Wynn, Scott, Cathy and Chris were all experiencing some similar form of grief as we eased Trucha out of her captive existence to whatever lays in store for her next. No matter what that is, it has to be better than the lousy hand she was dealt this time around.

 

Imagine being born in some tiny, filthy jail cell and then ripped from your mother at the age of only two weeks. The only one who would ever care about you, your mother, calls your name, moaning for the return of her cubs, but you are put into a metal cage in the breeder’s house. He is a slovenly sort and uses the lure of playing with baby tiger cubs to get young girls into his home. They will do just about anything to be the one who gets to feed you that bottle of cold, putrid liquid that bears no resemblance to the warm milk of your mother.

 

The young girls are often outcasts who do not have strong family or social ties and are subject to the bad influences so prevalent in big cat owners. They are often drunk or high on drugs when they come to care for you. They have no real training and your needs go untended due to neglect and ignorance. As soon as your eyes are opened you are subjected to hours upon hours of flashing light bulbs as you are handed from one laughing, giggling person to the next. You scream for your mother. You scream for it to stop, but no one hears your cries. Those who would rescue you have no legal recourse to liberate you from your tormentors. Those in charge of insuring your welfare are never there for you.

 

You have grown too big in just 3 or 4 months to be used this way. Your mother has already produced another litter of cubs, who are being pulled from her to start the process over. Your eyes have been so badly damaged that you only see shadows. You jump at everything and your world darkens in around you. Maybe it is better that you can’t see what is going to happen to you next.

 

You are relegated to some small, concrete and steel cell where you will be fed rotting flesh of whatever is cheapest; road kill, sick cows; the meat that cannot be sold. Your water bowl will be green with algae or swimming with mosquito larvae if it has water at all. The temperatures at both extremes will challenge your will to live because all you may have is a leaky box for shelter. You will be thrust in with other inmates, including your own litter mates, in the hopes that you will breed young. Your ragged ears and many scars are the visible result of having to battle for every day of your existence.  The inner stress is far more debilitating.  Your incestuous breeding is exactly what the breeder wants because that will get him more white cubs and the white cubs fetch more money.

 

You become the tiger version of a pu