Tribute to Sasha Lioness

What started out as a simple procedure to remove a mass from her face seemed to all be going great.  She had good respiration, good steady heartbeat, and we were all done and suturing up a little spot on her tongue, where another abrasion and lump had been found, when she stopped breathing.  Dr. Wynn and Dr. Boorstein administered CPR and injections to the heart to try and bring her back, but she was gone.  They are doing a necropsy now to try and determine the cause.  Already they have discovered that her lungs were riddled with tumors.  At nearly 20 years of age, Sasha is the oldest lion we have ever had.

 

Lioness Sasha has been declawed (and very badly, at that) and defanged) so she struggles to eat. We provide a soft diet for her, but without her teeth it is hard to hold the food and even hard to contain her tongue. You will often see her with her tongue hanging out as a result.

 

A Lion Pride of a Different Stripe

 

It took the combined efforts of USDA, undercover agents and concerned citizens seven years to shut down Diana McCourt (aka Cziraky) and her Siberian Tiger Foundation. It wasn’t until her landlords, Donnalynn and Christian Laver were able to evict her from the property that Knox County was able to seize the six cats who had been used for years as props in Diana McCourt’s “tiger training” scheme.   By the end of the ordeal eye witnesses said that the cats were starving and they still have inadequate shelter from the elements.

 

Even though McCourt lost her USDA license to operate the tiger-tamer camp in 2000, and permanently in 2006, she still continued to charge people to come into her back yard in Gambier, OH and pet the adult lions and tigers.   The cats would often be chained down so that people could touch them or have their photos made with the cats.   To make the cats more pliable McCourt had their teeth and claws removed. (Joseph still has his canine teeth) Despite the abusive violations to their bodies and mobility, the USDA investigation included eight allegations of attacks on visitors in an 8 month period.http://youtu.be/kIVp21JQJs4

In May of 2007 Diana McCourt emailed Carole Baskin asking if she could move her operation to Tampa and bring her cats to Big Cat Rescue.  Our response was that her cats were welcome here but her brand of animal abuse was not.  By August McCourt had been evicted and Knox County was awarded custody of the four tigers and two lions.  Dean Vickers, the State Director for the Ohio branch of the HSUS contacted Big Cat Rescue and asked if we could take the cats, but six more big cats increases our annual budget by $45,000.00. 

 

When Sarabi, our lioness died, her half acre enclosure was opened up so that Nikita our only other lioness could have the run of both half acre enclosures.  This large enclosure has an open roof and is only suitable for lions because they don’t climb, or very old, declawed tigers, who would be unable to climb.  Taking on two lions, age 9 and 13, who have a 20 year life expectancy means a cost of $15,000.00 annually and $150,000.00 in the long run.  Lions often end up in canned hunts, especially males who are coveted as wall trophies, so we felt certain our donors would help us rescue these two cats.  Our board convened and agreed that the lions would be rescued as soon as we could make travel arrangements for them.

 

Calling with the good news, that at least the lions would be spared, we were told by the landlord, who has been caring for the cats since evicting Diana McCourt, that the male tiger, Nikita, would be heartbroken that his best friend in the world, Joseph the lion, would be leaving.  As the conversation unfolded it appears that for the last 13 years, two tigers and two lions have shared a cage.  (Joseph only coming along in the past 9 yrs)  Instead of being elated for the lions, we now felt sick that they would be separated from the only pride (albeit tigers) they had ever known.  And thinking about how th