Why Do You Turn the Cameras Off?

That's the question I am frequently asked, but the real question should be, "why do you have LIVE web cams?"  I'll answer both.

 

If it were up to me there would be LIVE webcams broadcasting every aspect of what we do, 24/7, and no matter what was happening, they would continue to stream the truth out to the world.  That's because I believe that complete transparency builds trust by letting people see, with their own eyes, everything that is involved in the keeping of wild cats in cages.  Those who want to know the truth will watch and learn and become our greatest allies in the freedom fight to end the practice of breeding exotic cats for life in prison.  Those who prefer to pass around cute cub photos and purposely blind themselves to the reality of those cubs' lives, are not the people who are going to help save them, or the planet, anyway.

 

I think that seeing the things no one else shows you, gives you the power to decide what is right and what is wrong.  I think it's necessary for you to see every aspect of what it means to be a captive and to understand why no captive born big cat can ever be set free.  You need to see the struggle our keepers go through, every day, to assist cats who have become so debilitated, by the fact that they were ripped from their moms early in life, and didn't get proper nutrition.  You should be able to watch those cats struggle every day to eat enough food and drink enough water, or get frozen blood to hydrate them, so that you are empowered to speak out against the evils of cub handling.  You should be able to see that even though some of the cats are skinny, lame or missing limbs or eyes.

 

When a cat is on the surgery table, in the Windsong Memorial Hospital, you should be right there with us, experiencing the heart rending decisions that have to balance what veterinary medicine can do vs. what it should do for the benefit of the cat.  There is an old saying, "when all you got are hammers, all your problems look like nails."  Thanks to advances in science and medicine we can prolong life in many ways, but who are we doing it for?  At Big Cat Rescue we have only ONE determining factor when choosing a heroic measure to save or extend a life vs euthanasia and that is the quality of life for the cat.

 

We stream LIVE from the West Boensch recovery hospital too.  You watch with us to see the days, weeks and sometimes months of recovery, so that you have an idea how we weigh the trauma of intensive care against the future quality of life a cat may be able to experience.  Every day and night, as we watch the cat trying to rebound, we are encouraged and yet there is always that huge question in our minds as to whether or not this will prove worth it to the cat.  Is this the choice they would make if they could tell us?

 

Sometimes the cats do tell us, that despite our best efforts, they aren't willing to keep fighting.  Sometimes we discover in surgery, or from blood work or other diagnostics, that there is no happy ending in sight, and we make the sad decision to euthanize.  Even when we know it was the kindest thing to do, it is never easy.

 

So why do we turn the cameras off sometimes?

 

There are a number of reasons, but most of them involve the fact that I don't speak for all of us.  Animal abusers want desperately to silence us and they can count on many people being lazy, self centered and prone to ignore anything that doesn't support their fantasy of being able to kiss and hug wild animals.  These cub pimps will take our words out of context, or tightly crop an image of a cage to make it look like our cats live in cramped quarters.  They gleefully share lies about how our cats die in an effort to stir up a frenzy of hatred toward us.  They will replay, over and over and over, a brief snippet of a situation to make it look as if the cat were not being given expert care.  I've been the target of their hate campaigns for more than 20 years, so it