Bengali was First to Arrive and the Last to Leave

It was either late 1997 or maybe 1998 when a friend of mine walked into my office and said, “You have to see this!”

 

That led to a road trip to nefariously meet with an elephant keeper who said that he just hated tigers and would do anything to get rid of them.  He was angry because his well hidden plot of dirt, where used elephants go to disappear, had been taken over by a long row of circus wagons full of tigers.  I could not believe my eyes when I saw circus wagon after wagon, each with a lone tiger and a water bowl and nothing else.  No shade, no toys, no place to lay except on the hot, hard floors of the iron barred cages.  The keeper said the cats had been there for a couple of years because they wouldn’t perform any more and that USDA was all over them about the conditions, but nobody wanted to spend money on building a retirement center for them because, unlike the elephants, breeding them wasn’t as lucrative.  There were plenty of back yard breeders who were using cubs for photo ops and then selling them to the circuses to be used.

 

That began 2 or 3 years of negotiations between me and the circus to get these cats out of the beast wagons and into our sanctuary.  I’d just lost my husband and the courts had seized our assets because we didn’t know where he’d gone, or if he’d be back.  His kids by a former wife didn’t want any more of “their money” being wasted on feeding and caring for lions, tigers and the other hundred or so exotic cats at the sanctuary.  I had to learn how to ask for money and help because I could only access a limited allowance, which was a third of what it cost to actually run the rescue.  There was no way I could afford to take the 20 tigers from the circus when I knew that each cat would cost me 7500.00 in just food and vet care (back then).

 

The negotiations ended with the agreement that the circus would build the cages and supply the food and vet care costs and I would take the cats who were currently sitting in Williston, FL and the rest of the tigers as they got ill or stopped performing until all 19 tigers and 1 leopard were here.  The caveat was that I could not tell anyone the name of the circus or they could take the cats back.  I held good to that promise because I shudder at the thought of where these cats could end up.

 

Just before Christmas in the year 2000 the first six tigers arrived: “the bengal” (because he never had a name and was just referred to by his breed), his brother, S.A.R.M.O.T.I., Nini, Axel, Buffy and Conan.  We added the i to Bengal to give him a proper name of Bengali.  Bengali and S.A.R.M.O.T.I. had been reported to have been born at the infamous Siegfried and Roy nightclub in Las Vegas, but because they were the “wrong” color (golden instead of white) they were handed off to the circus. They rode in a chariot behind horses, which had to be a torment to the horses, as well as the tigers, who were restrained (use your imagination for how, but I guarantee it wasn’t “positive reinforcement”) from doing what they would naturally do to horses.

 

Getting records from circuses and private owners always proves challenging.  The paperwork they arrived with said Bengali had been born in 1995, but later, one of the circus vets said they had records on him going back to 1993.  We discovered that back in 2013 when his brother S.A.R.M.O.T.I. died.  Whether he was 5 or 7 when he arrived; he was still a youngster.  Tigers usually don’t begin killing their owners and trainers until they are somewhere between 5 and 7, even though they can look full grown at a year or two.  When Bengali arrived his trainers said he was treacherous and would surely kill someone, but as soon as he had 2,000 square feet of space to himself, with a pond, cave, trees, bushes and grass, he became one of the happiest and most beloved of tigers who ever stepped foot on Tampa soil.

 

It was clear, as I tried to walk off the morning’s events, an