2011 Annual Report

 

Big Cat Rescue is more than just a place that provides permanent care for big cats.  It is a movement;  a change in the tide of human perceptions and is the combined effort of more than 54,000 supporters.  If you are one of them, you are a Big Cat Rescuer and the following is the great work YOU did!  If you haven’t helped yet, you can do so now at the top right of the screen or here:  http://bigcatrescue.org/donate

 

Big Cat Rescue’s Mission Statement:  Big Cat Rescue’s dual mission is to provide the best home we can for the cats in our care and educate the public about the plight of these majestic animals, both in captivity and in the wild, to end abuse and avoid extinction.  We are Caring for Cats and Ending the Trade

 

Advances:  With your help we are winning in the battle for compassion! Up until 2003 the number of requests for rescues we had to turn down due to lack of space or funds had roughly doubled every other year, to 312 that year. We feared it would double again to over 500 in 2004. Instead, it has steadily declined since then thanks to the passage of a federal bill and several state bills that restrict the ownership of exotic cats. This year there were only 15 big cats who came to our attention as being abandoned and we were able to take in 10. We offered to take all of the cats who were cougar size or smaller, if their owners would contract to never own another exotic cat, but the rest refused.  We just do not have enough Senior Keeper staff to take on more lions or tigers than the three we took this year.

 

Volgistics became our new time tracking service on Jan 1, 2012 and has replaced our use of Freshbooks.  Everyone seems to like the big buttons and easy check in and check out process.

 

Animal Care:   By the end of this year, 106 of our 119 animals are over the age of 12 and 89 are over the age of 15. This is well beyond how long they are designed to live in the wild and much older than most zoo cats.  This is a testament to the excellent animal care we provide, but we are dealing with many more age related illnesses and are losing more of our big cat friends every year.

 

Rescues:  With the help of some very special donors we were able to rescue Amanda, Arthur and Andre; 3 tigers who had been rescued in 2003 from NJ and sent to Wild Animal Orphanage in TX, which collapsed in 2010.  Max the baby bobcat came to us after the RI DNR seized him from an illegal owner.  5 servals, Zoul, Zouletta, Zimba, Santino and Doodles, who had been kept in a NY basement for 14 years were rescued.  Another serval named Kricket was also brought in from VA when her owner could no longer keep her.  We were also able to help with the placement of another serval, a bobcat and did a lot of rehab consultation work via phone and email.

 

One of those bobcats was Rufus who came in to a Rehabber on Dec 5 weighing 4 lbs, with a broken jaw, split canine and comatose.  They figured he had been hit by a car, but at 4 lbs couldn’t believe that he survived.  After he woke up from the coma he was pretty loopy, but they figured the impact had done brain damage.  They had to wire the jaw shut, tube feed him and removed the broken canine. He is now about 7 lbs, is eating solids on his own and doing much better but appears to be blind.  He was having bad and frequent seizures, but those have almost subsided.  They have asked if we can give him a forever home if his eyesight does not return and we stand ready to help.  On 12/21/11 we had another perfect USDA inspection.

 

Education:  Our website, BigCatRescue.org underwent a painful renovation from a static html site to a WordPress CMS site during 2010 and 2011.  All of the page names had to be changed to fit the new system which meant a huge drop in traffic and initially a huge drop in inbound links, although, by the end of the year we had gained more than a thousand more inbound links than we had before, so it is going to prove a worth while move.  The site was co