Carole Baskins Diary

Tribute to Two Toes the Bobcat

4/24/95 - 9/28/10 Arrived at Big Cat Rescue 6/6/95

 

Two Toes was rescued from a fur farm and came to live at Big Cat Rescue, along with Levi and eight other Bobcats, in June 1995. She got her name because two of her toes are white. She, along with her roommates, actively participated in Operant Conditioning sessions with our Big Cat Interns. Operant Conditioning is the act of rewarding a desired behavior with treats or praise. The first goal in the Operant Conditioning program is to get the cat to come over to the side of their enclosure when called upon by a Keeper.

 

Two Toes learned quickly that when she came over to her operant trainer, she was quickly rewarded with a special treat. Since Two Toes lived with several other bobcats, operant training was done by several keepers at one time, so that two bobcats were not competing for the same reward.

 

Most of our bobcats were rescues from fur farms.  The deal our Founders made with the fur farms we discovered in the U.S. was that we would pay top dollar for every cat and kitten they had as long as the fur farmer would agree to never buy and breed cats again for slaughter.  It came at a time that the public outcry was against the fur industry.  Many of these animals were purchased at auctions where the uncaring owners were dumping the cats with no concern about their welfare.

 

There is much controversy over whether we did the right thing by paying the ransom for these cats.  We still accept many unwanted cats each year, but do not pay for them and typically require that their owner surrender their license, in an attempt to keep people from just trading in their cats each year for a newer, cuter model.  We have to turn away more than 100 cats each year due to a lack of space and funds and the lack of regulation of the exotic pet trade.

 

September 28, 2010:  Two Toes, the bobcat, had been separated from her clan for observation.  She was having a very hard time breathing.  About the only way to tell the two females in the Crazy Bob Crew was that Two Toes has two white toes, but that is only apparent from the underside of her paw.

 

Sadly, she had a heart attack and died very suddenly.  Heroic efforts were exerted to revive her, but she was on her way to wherever good bobcats go and after seeing the light, she wasn't coming back.  Her after death exam showed her to be suffering from heart failure.

 

She was "only" 15, but that is the equivalent of being a 90 year old person.  Despite being so old, she was glossy coated, shiny eyed and never backed down from being independent and defiant; the things we love most about bobcats.  We are accustomed to our cats living far beyond the norm because of the excellent care given them, and we will miss her greatly - but she is finally free.

 

I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views.  If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story.  The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/

 

I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story.  My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.  

 

You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile!

Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile

 

You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org

 

Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue

 

Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only and is my opinion.

Tribute to Midnight, Rain and Storm

 

At only 6 months old and quite unexpectedly, Storm has passed away.  Though he was so young, his loss is still extremely hard for us.  As Jamie Veronica, President of Big Cat Rescue recounts about his passing, "An image of him as a baby flashed through my mind, a memory so clear of this spunky and voracious eater.  Just a wobbly little kitten he had eaten so much turkey for dinner one evening.  He stopped to take a break and had fallen asleep face down in his plate of food.

 

As he lay there, it was heard to believe that he was not going to wake up in a few moments and continue on with his antics.  At the end of the room there stood a massive collection of bins with blankets of all shapes and sizes.  I pulled out the top bin.  It was light with the weight of only a small blanket or towel.  I opened the lid only to be struck in the heart once more.  A lump swelled with in my throat and my eyes welled up once more.  I reached out with the same hand that had just grasped the lifeless body of Storm the bobcat and timidly retrieved the last linen in the bin.  It was a red fleece blanket with white snowflakes adorning it.  I pulled the cozy blanket in close and closed my eyes.  I recalled the night nearly five months ago when I retrieved the three kittens from their rescuer in Alabama.

 

I remember walking into the room to see a cardboard box on the coffee table.  I pulled open the top of the box and peered inside.  My eyes fixed on three tiny balls of spotted fluff snuggled up in the warm of this very same red fleece blanket with white snowflakes adorning it."  Storm's life was short, but he was a very famous little bobcat.  The story, videos, and news coverage of Storm is summarized below...

 

MIDNIGHT, RAIN AND STORM'S ARRIVAL

 

With a gun in one hand and a sack of bobcat kittens in the other, an Alabama hunter proudly plopped the newborns down on the counter and asked the veterinary assistant to raise them up for him so he could give them to his kids as pets.

 

The vet tech was stunned, but quickly recomposed herself to tell the hunter she would do it for him so as to rescue the babies from such an awful fate. She immediately began scouring the Internet for an expert in rehab and release. When she called Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue it was agreed that the kittens would come to Florida, be raised for re-release back to the wild and the paperwork began.

 

It took three days to secure the Florida import permit and time was of the essence. The only kitten formula available to the clinic was one that often causes serious dehydration in bobcat kittens. The second more critical factor was that their eyes would be opening any day and if they were to ever live free it was imperative that they not bond to humans. They never make good pets, but the bonding that takes place during the nursing stage could make them fearless of people and that would get them into trouble as adults.

 

While Big Cat Rescue President and resident Rehabber, Jamie Veronica, hit the road to begin a 24 hour road trip to rescue the baby bobcats, Big Cat Rescue put out a call to all of the Tampa animal based charities and on all of their social networks that they needed a nursing mother cat who had kittens of her own. Jack Talman of FosteringIsCool.com found a mother cat but her kittens were too old and she was going into heat so there was concern that she may not have milk nor interest for new babies.

 

Big Cat Rescuer, Merrill Kramer, called on Rick Chaboudy, CEO of Suncoast Animal League in Palm Harbor, FL and he said he thought he had a good candidate. Her name was Bobbi because of her half tail and she had given birth to 6 kittens of her own and then adopted two more. He found foster parents for all but two of the kittens and brought Bobbi and her brood over to see what she thought of diversifying her family.

 

Introductions like these can be very scary because the mother cat can be overly protective of her own

Newsweek Exposes the Cruelty Behind Breeding White Tigers

 

I’ve been working in the area behind Nirvana for the past several days and have had the pleasure of hearing tour guides talking about the white tiger issue.  I have heard the amazement in the voices of the guests as they learned that every thing they thought knew about white tigers was wrong.

 

I have heard guests try to argue the facts or ignore the new information by proclaiming that they still think white tigers are beautiful.  It has given me a new appreciation for what all of you go through when giving tours.  It especially impresses me that some of you, who are still so new to the knowledge yourselves, manage to be firm in your presentations while still being kind to the guests.

 

This week a thirty year old secret was exposed in Newsweek, the second largest weekly magazine in America.  Sharyn Beach exposed it in Britannica Online Encyclopedia in March of this year.  It is the same secret that Big Cat Rescue exposed 11 years ago as the first organization to go public with the truth about the white tiger.

 

What I knew in 1998 was that people could sell a white tiger cub for $60,000 and just about all of the breeders and dealers and zoos were out to breed them.  I had been to facilities such as the one where Shere Khan was born, (Dennis Hill in Flatrock, IN) and where Modnic, TJ & Bella came from (Robert Baudy of Savage Kingdom in Center Hill, FL) and where Auroara had come from (Predators Plus).  What I saw haunted me because I saw many tigers who had horrible deformities;  teeth going in all directions, eyes out on the nose, clubbed feet and lame hips.

 

These birth defects were primarily in the white tigers, but some of their golden litter mates were affected as well.  I started asking about who the tigers’ parents were, who their siblings were, and discovered that people were inbreeding these cats.  They never used that word, but rather would say “line breeding” or “selective breeding” or they would make outrageous claims about how they had “created” a line of white tigers by choosing the best pairings. In 1998 there were only 200 white tigers world wide.  With Siegfried and Roy promoting white tigers as Royal White Bengal tigers the breeders scurried to meet demand.

 

Especially complicit were the Cincinnati Zoo & the Nashville Zoo who knew that the origins of white tigers only came from severe inbreeding.  It was common knowledge to breeders that there was an 80% mortality rate.  They should have put an end to it right then and there, but white tigers were a novelty and people would pay to see them.  The accredited zoos, who actually keep pedigrees on their tigers, knew that inbreeding was the only way to increase their probability of getting that money making white cub.

 

In 1998 I still thought that most of the breeders and dealers out there were just ignorant.  I was a member of AZA and had been attending their conferences and meeting their cat experts to find out what they thought to be best practices.  I thought that if the private sector knew better they would behave better and so I spent a lot of time writing articles for their club called the Feline Conservation Federation (FKA the Long Island Ocelot Club).  I was part of their list serve and participated in discussions about exotic cat husbandry in the hopes of helping their cats have better lives.  We had only had the Internet for a couple of years and were still trying to find ways to use it to band all exotic cat owners together for a comprehensive repository of information on best practices.  Our own website had only been up for two years and I was using it as a way of making all of the lessons we had learned available for everyone else.  I figured the reason all of these breeders had so many defective tigers was because they didn’t know that they were all so inbred and they were just making it worse by not keeping records.

 

I proposed all of what I knew about white tigers on our w

From Fur Farm Rescuers to Freedom Fighters

 

Most of you know that the sanctuary started with Windsong the bobcat in 1992 who inspired us to do fur farm rescues in 1993, 1994 & 1995.  When those last cats were rescued from the fur farm in 1995 that closed the era on cats being farmed in the U.S. for their fur.  To our knowledge there were no more fur farms who were raising and killing cats for their fur within our borders…

 

But there was a fur farm left in Canada.  We began negotiating with them to do the same thing there that we had done here:  buy every cat they had IF they would agree to quit raising and killing cats for their fur.  The price was going to be $90,000 to buy all of the cats and we would have to build cages for them as they arrived, which run us about $7500. per cage.   The negotiations took two years but in late June of 1997 the first four kittens arrived:  Apollo, Zeus, Boris and Natasha.  They were only 2 months old and about as unfriendly as they come.

 

A month an a half later Don went missing.  In our last story time I told you about all of the other cats and kittens who were in need of intensive care at the time of his disappearance.  The chaos was just indescribable.

 

Two of our volunteers stepped in to help.  Lenore offered to take Boris & Natasha and one of the cougar cubs to help alleviate the pressure on Jamie and I to provide around the clock care to so many youngsters.  Jackie took a bobcat and 3 cougars.  Of all of the people who adopted cats from us back then, I can only think of two people who didn't end up accidentally killing or returning them.  Lenore and Jackie; although Jackie did send back Enya and her brother.

 

Over the years both have asked me to take all of the cats back, but with a little persuasion (OK arm twisting) I have been able to get them to keep their commitments to the cats.  Both take a lot of pride in the fact that they have exotic cats as pets, but I think both would tell you that they wouldn't do it again if they had it to do over.

 

The picture is of Boris and Natasha (two males) who live on Lenore’s lanai.  She still can't touch the cats and can never know the kind of love that we expect to be able to give and receive from pets.  The cougar died last year.  The reason I wanted to tell you about these cats today is because both of these former volunteers have called me recently with concerns about legislation we are trying to pass.

 

Our opponents, the people who breed, sell and exploit wild animals sent out a letter to permit holders in Florida telling them that the laws we are trying to pass will cause them to have to euthanize or relinquish their "pets."  That isn't true, but the animal terrorists, as Jamie calls them, can't get any support for their position if they actually tell the truth.  They have to make up scare tactics like this to get support for their abusive industry.

 

The laws we seek to put in place will ban the breeding, buying, selling and possession of exotic cats BUT there is always a caveat built in to grandfather in the animals that are currently possessed.  When people try to give up their cats we always try to find ways for them to keep the cats because the animals don't like change and the people who bought them should keep their commitment to the animals if that is at all possible.

 

There is rarely room in good sanctuaries for exotic cats so we will always advocate for regulations that enable the cats to stay with their owners if at all possible and if that is suitable for the cat.  What a ban would prohibit is bringing more animals into captive situations and would close the loophole caused by people claiming they had the animals prior to the ban.  That is why they must register the animal at the time of the change in the law in order to keep the animal.  The only cases I know of where animals were confiscated after a ban was when people refused, after being advised and threatened with confiscation several times, to register t

Catera Bobcat Dies

”You don't have to worry about me anymore…now I'll be looking out for you," Catera purred softly. I sighed deeply, comforted by his words and yet slightly amused by his promise. His rumbling purr gave way to the sound of rain outside as I awakened more fully.

 

Yes, he was right; I wouldn't awake to the sound of a rain storm and wonder if he was safe and dry. No longer would I fret about him if I had to leave town for more than a day or two. My daily rounds at the sanctuary would no longer carry that heavy sense of dread as I approached his cage; wondering if he would have relapsed back again into some dreadful state of discomfort with processing his food. His life had been so hard from the very day he was born and yet he had such a zest for life and such a happy disposition that every time I thought I just couldn't stand to see him struggle through another setback, he would bounce back and take life by the horns again.

 

He died in his sleep, curled up in his den on August 10, 2010. Big Cat Rescuer, Sharon Dower may have been the last person to see him alive. It was around noon as she was cleaning in the area and she said, "I was talking with him just this afternoon, around 12:30. He chattered a bit, rolled over and showed me his belly, then yawned." A little while later, Hallelujah the cougar began wailing.

 

Everyone around the sanctuary knows what that means. Hal has a 6th sense for those who are dying and his wails sent chills down Marie Schoubert and Willow Hecht's backs. When they told Regina Rinaldi about it she exclaimed, "Uh-oh! Hal always gets vocal when a cat passes...he just knows." Some dear four footed friend was leaving the sanctuary and this world and it wasn't long before we discovered it was Catera. When Operations Manager, Gale Ingham called me into the Cat Hospital to tell me, I was stunned. Catera had been doing pretty well lately. I had just visited with him the night before and he was his happy, chirping, dancing self. After 13 years of worrying about his health every day, he was gone in an instant…probably his way of letting us all know that it was his decision and not the hand of fate.

 

His parents, Shiloh and Indian Summer had been a bonded pair for seven years before coming to live on Easy Street in late 1996. They had never reproduced, so we left them together and of course a litter of three resulted in just a few short months. Indian Summer, on the third day, began killing the kittens and by the time I could get to her, two were dead and she was biting the last one on the chest and abdomen. I snatched the bleeding kitten away from her and took it to medicate and bottle raise.

 

It wasn't long before the I discovered why Summer had brutally attacked her offspring. Catera (named for the Caddy that zigs) was obviously brain damaged and from the condition of all three kittens, it was apparent that they had not been nursing although the dam had stayed with them faithfully. He was skinny his whole life and that just accentuated his bug eyed face that seemed to be perpetually full of surprise and wonder.

 

It took hours to feed Catera and every time, it was as if it was the first time for him. It took him a year to get on to solid foods and again, every meal was like the first he ever had. If I were to walk out of the room and walk back in ten minutes later, he had forgotten who I was and only through the vocalizations we have shared over and over and over would he again recognize me. Once he made the mental connection, he would be exuberant and would dance around in circles, chirping, rolling and acting so cute that, no matter what, it would put a smile on my face and in my heart.

 

Every day was new and exciting to Catera and he is quite possibly the happiest cat who ever lived on Easy Street. Catera would run incessantly in circles and "bark" at everyone he couldn't remember, which was everyone. It wasn't until his "sister," President Jamie Veronica began doing operant

Tribute to Sophia Cougar

Sophia Cougar  1/1/91 - 7/24/10  Rescued 1/22/09

 

"Will anyone give me $200 for this fine breeding age puma?" the auctioneer's voice blasts over the loud speakers in the livestock barn during an animal auction in Louisiana. An animal abuser raises his number, thinking to himself, that he can mount her head and that of the male cougar he just bought over the T. V. in his trailer. The gavel slams down and Sophia's life has just taken a perilous change for the worse. She and her mate had been ripped from their mothers when they were cubs, declawed and bottle raised to be used as ego props. When they were little they could be used for photo opportunities and could be walked about on leashes as mini trophies. Now they were too big for that and their owner had crated them into tiny cages and consigned them over to a live animal auction.

 

These auctions are legal in the US and all manner of exotic animals, many of them endangered species, are sold to anyone who has the cash. To qualify as a buyer is pretty straightforward; if you are buying an endangered species, like a tiger, you have to have proof that you live in the state and if you are buying any non endangered animal, all you have to do is prove that you don't live in the state. Once you leave the state, no one in the selling state cares who you are or what you do. If you are buying within your own state lines, then your state may or may not have some regulations. One thing is true everywhere and that is that even states with regulations never have the money or resources to properly enforce them. 7 states have no rules so anything goes. Want to walk your tiger through a nursing home or a grade school? "No problem" say a lot of states, including Florida, where we have repeatedly documented that very issue.

 

Sophia's new owner loads her and the male cougar into a truck and heads to a taxidermist he knows in Laronger, Louisiana named Joe. The story, as relayed to me by Joe, was that the owner pulled up and promptly shot the male cougar, announcing that he wanted the cat stuffed and mounted. Hearing the gun shot, Joe's wife Mary came running out of the house, just in time to see the gun leveled at the trembling female cougar in the tiny crate. Mary yelled out, "Don't shoot the cougar! Oh please! Don't kill the cat!"

 

Joe described himself to me as a wildlife sculptor, but when pressed for details of his art, he lowered his gaze and said, "My sculptures are cast into molds that are then sold to taxidermists." When animals are skinned and mounted, their skins are stretched over these plastic reproductions. Joe is famous for how lifelike his reproductions are and he credits that to studying the live animals. His acreage is divided into pastures full of caged animals; the kinds who are often killed for sport.

 

The redneck advises the couple that he paid good money for these cats so he could mount them on his wall. He looks to Joe to explain to the missus that she needs to mind her own business. Joe has done well for himself. The large, fenced track of land sports a very large home, with high glass windows out onto Joe's world, and a wrap around deck so that he can sculpt with unobstructed views, all of the creatures who are posing for the lifeless bodies of countless others of their kind. There is a barn the size of an airline hangar that houses row upon row, floor to ceiling, of the plastic reproductions of his art. His business is primarily selling to taxidermists.

 

Joe startles the red neck by asking, "How much for her?" The gun's barrel drops earthward as the killer reckons that he paid $200 for her and it cost him $50 to get her here, or in other words, he wants a $50 profit. Mountain lions are cheap. He can buy another one. Joe agrees and moves Sophia into a chicken coop.

 

That was 13 years ago and what looked like a chicken coop to me was probably used for housing fancy pheasants who were used as models for the stuffed bodies of exotic

Windsong Bobcat, Founder of Big Cat Rescue, Dies

Female Bobcat DOB 4/30/92 - 6/11/2010  Arrived at Big Cat Rescue 11/5/92

 

Windsong is the bobcat who started Big Cat Rescue.  Windsong was at the Woods and Waters Auction on November 4 1992 where we went to buy Llamas to greenbelt some of our property. She was six months old, on a leash, and being held by her owner in a room full of noisy people and animals. She was obviously terrified.  Her owner said she had been his wife's pet that she didn't want any more and he was here to get rid of her.

 

The man next to me began bidding on her and, as someone who had rehabbed and released wild bobcats since I was in my teens, I warned him that when this cat grew up she would tear his face off.  He said that he was a taxidermist and would just club her in the head in the parking lot so he didn't have to deal with her.  His plan was to stuff her and sell her as a den decoration.  Windsong had already stolen my heart and there was no way we were going to allow her precious life to be stolen in such a gruesome way.

 

Windsong taught us more about wild animals than we had ever known, in a very short time. She shattered all of our preconceptions about the emotional nature of wild cats.  The following spring we drove to Minnesota to pick up two Bobcats, two Canadian Lynx, and two Siberian Lynx to bottle raise as friends for Windsong.  When the breeder turned out to be a fur farm we came home with all 56 kittens!

 

We have since learned that all wild cats make awful pets.  As much as we love each and every one of ours, they all bite and they all spray.

 

Windsong Stays On My Mind

 

6/11/2010  Windsong was in the final stages of renal failure according to her blood work today. She had been diagnosed last December and treated for her advance arthritis, and given fluids, but the treatment only bought her another six months. Now she was wasting away, feeling too nauseous to eat regularly and was beginning to get mouth ulcers that come along with advanced renal failure. I could delay making this awful choice, pump her full of fluids and painkillers again and hope for a few more months, but that would only delay the inevitable. Windsong is 18 and there was no way to turn back the clock and time's ravages on her little body. She was already asleep while we were doing the blood work, so I asked Dr. Wynn to end her life before she had to suffer even one more day of feeling awful. It was very peaceful as her spirit left her frail little "cat suit."

 

I have never cried so much and wondered out loud to Jamie as to why? I believe that we are all eternal and come into and out of form for reasons that we signed up for in advance. I believe that each of us comes here to learn and to teach and to work together for a perfect existence. I don't miss the cats or the people I have loved who have died because I feel them in and around me all the time, so what are all these tears? Jamie responded that it is because Windsong is an icon. She is the reason that this sanctuary exists. She started all of this and now she's gone and it feels like something bigger than life has slipped away from us.

 

The water soothes me, so I drove out to the beach. As soon as I arrived I saw a dolphin rolling and playing in the bay. I wondered what Windsong, who was free at last would do on her first day of freedom. Would she roll in the surf like a dolphin? A seabird flew over head and I wondered if she would be torn between flying high above the shore, or swimming deep beneath the waves, or if you can do both simultaneously in spirit form. I am happy that she never has to spend another day in a cage, but the tears just kept streaming down my face. Why?

 

I thought back to the first time I saw her. It was on Nov. 4, 1992 (the date we celebrate as the birth of the sanctuary) when her owner carried her into the ring of an exotic animal auction. She had her paws wrapped so tightly around his neck. Her liquid gold eyes were exa

Tribute to Snorkel Tiger

Male Siberian/Bengal Tiger DOB 1996 - March 12, 2010

 

Snorkel was born in 1996 to the same abuser who bred Nakoma the lion, Roxy Luce.  She breeds lions and tigers and uses them to make money by selling you a photo of you holding a cute little cub.  The general public just doesn’t understand what could be wrong with this? Typically, these cubs are starved, deprived of bone building calcium and even poisoned to give them constant diarrhea so that they cannot gain weight.  Exhibitors do this because the cubs are only profitable while they are small.  According to FL state law, the public cannot touch the cubs once they reach 45 pounds.  Then they are discarded.

 

Snorkel was given to a small, family-operated circus (Lance Ramos) when he exceeded 45 pounds at the age of 6 months. Because he had been so deprived of nutrition, he was very tiny and stands on little stunted legs.  The other bigger circus tigers beat him up and one bit him across the nose so severely that, when he chuffs, it sounds like he is drowning, thus his name.  He has never had soft grass to roll in or a pool or mountain cave to call his own before coming to Big Cat Rescue.  He has been one of the happiest tigers we have ever rescued.

 

We had to say goodbye to another one of our great cats this afternoon.  Thank you everyone for caring for him all of these years, you truly provided Snorkel the best possible life and he let everyone know with his enthusiastic chuffs.

 

I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views.  If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story.  The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/

 

I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story.  My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.  

 

You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile!

Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile

 

You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org

 

Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue

 

Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only and is my opinion.

Wooing Dr. Diasti Dear Dr. Diasti, Thank you for coming to our rescue! At first this may all appear quite daunting, but we have some amazing systems in place to monitor our cats' health and our vet has access to all of this from her iPhone and from any computer. I have added you as one with Vet access, so please to not accidentally delete information. Changes you make on the charts appear for all of us on our versions. That is both the beauty of the site, and why we have to be very careful. This is where most of our cats' health records are kept and only 7 of our staff & volunteers and staff have access to this section: The Census is all of our cats, their ages and species. 74 of our 120 cats are over the age of 15 so we are dealing with lots of old age problems. These cats usually only live 10-12 years in zoos. Daily Med Charts are the dozen or so cats who are on meds daily. See the tabs at the bottom of the chart to click to different cats. Our Keepers log their initials to let the vet and our Operations Manager, Gale Ingham, know that the meds were taken. Documents has our USDA Program of Veterinary Care agreement that we have to keep on site for USDA inspections. How To Give Meds are training guides and a 25 minute video on how to use the sedation equipment and load the darts and jab stick. Med Inventory is the running inventory of our medications on site and is kept up to date by one of our Sr. Keepers. She also makes up the baggies for each cat's meds for each day. These are made up a week in advance and kept under lock and key. This is the anesthetic protocol and I think lions and tigers are somewhat different from each other in what works. The bold Record Archive is each of our cats and their medical history. The Record Archive 2 is for cats who have passed on, but kept as a reference. This link is our main Volunteer website where our 100+ volunteers make daily observations about the cats: These pages can only hold 500 entries each, so soon it will be a page ending in -2 Volunteers log the observations, the Operations Manager, Gale, checks them off after she checks on the cat and our vet checks them off after she looks at the cat on her weekly rounds. If this is too much bother for you, we can print the list on paper, and then after you have seen the cats, I will go in and check them off so that our volunteers know the cat has been seen by both the manager and the vet. In the left sidebar is a page called Food & Feces. Jamie Veronica and I do, because the first indication that a cat is sick is often when they leave food, or have some weird feces. The Food Chart link is for those cats who are always poor doers, so we know what goes in them and what comes out. The link at left called Med Charts takes you off this site and to the Secure Vet Log site at (mentioned above) The search feature on both sites is very good, so if you are looking for cats who had hypertension, you can type that key word and find the cat's charts. A lot of our files were handwritten and are on site, but they do not scan with OCR well enough to be included in our searchable charts. I am planning to scan and post them for reference individually though. I emailed Dr. Wynn and said I had found a vet who was willing to help out as a backup vet for when she is out of town, or unavailable, and asked if she would mind showing this person around and sharing her experiences. Since yesterday was her day here to do rounds, I don't think she will be available again before Sunday. We had another volunteer vet here, Dr. Kelly Rice, but she lives in Bradenton so she is having a hard time keeping up her hours as a volunteer. Dr. Wynn was always willing to let Dr. Rice help out on things, but Dr. Rice was only able to come once or twice a month and has said she is just too busy this time of year to come at all. Both women originally just came here to volunteer cleaning cages, but when I found out they were vets I asked them to help with veterinary stuff.

Diana Rao Says I Should Write a Book (as do many others)

 

An email to Diana Rao, one of our volunteers who was going skiing.  My cousin, Mike Crim, and his teenage daughter were skiing in CO and he hit a tree and died on the slope.  His wife and teenage son were back at the lodge that day because they were sick.  Mike worked for a place in Tampa called In The News and did the framed Big Cat Rescue article in the Party House for us.

 

His mother, Carole, is my mother's only sister and my namesake.  She had six boys.  Matt, her eldest, is the one I was raised with by our Grandmother "Momma Jacquie" (of Momma Jacquie's Cool Cat Cafe)  Matt and his girlfriend was my private tour on Saturday.  Matt had worked with Jamie on the Dave Mathews Band contest we did at Skipper's Smokehouse because they are DMB groupies.

 

Both of our mothers worked full time back in the 60's so Momma Jacquie raised Matt & I until we were old enough for school.  Jamie was her first great grandchild and she really wanted Jamie to go to college, but Jamie finished high school 2 years early as Valedictorian of her little private school so that she could help me run the sanctuary when Don left in 1997.

 

She never got the chance to follow her path, and when Momma Jacquie offered to send her to college, she asked that the money be donated to the sanctuary so we could build Food Prep instead.  Back then Jamie had cuts all over her from working in the tight quarters of our old Food Prep that was in a truck body in front of Apollo and Zeus.  Imagine all of the people slinging knives during food prep in a space that was only about 3 feet wide and 15 feet long, and that was what Food Prep was like.  A real nightmare!

 

Coincidentally, in 1997 we lost Don, my aunt Carole lost her husband Duane, who was Mike's dad, and we lost my grandfather, Big Daddy (the odd names were because he and Momma Jacquie told everyone they were my parents when I was little.)  Two years later Jamie lost her half brother Mickey in a car accident on his 29th birthday.  You have probably seen the sign on Jumanji's cage that she had made to commemorate the loss.

 

From his obituary:  CRIM, Michael, 41, of Temple Terrace, Fla., died in a skiing accident, December 24, 2009. A devoted servant of the Lord, husband, father, son, brother, uncle and lifetime friend, he selflessly gave in everything he did. Heaven is richer, our lives are poorer.

 

All in one email it seems like a lot of tragedy, but we have a huge family, so it probably isn't much different than the average over all.

 

And her reply:  WOW Carole, it truly is a tragedy that he died so young and the fact that your family is so large doesn't lessen the sense of loss.    Your family lost someone who sounds like a wonderful, active and caring man.    My heart goes out to you and all the others.    It seems like all of you are very close and share a lot of experiences and not having him there will be sad.   I think the loss of a loved one, be he/she friend or family is something no one ever gets "used to".   The pain is always sharp and the sense of loss is always great.  I think the only thing we learn from our many losses is that the passage of time does eventually heal and sweetens our memories.   The last sentence of his obituary, "Heaven is richer, our lives are poorer" is one of the most beautiful tributes to someone I have read.

 

On a different note, I hope that somewhere in your very busy schedule you have taken or can take some time to document and keep a written history of your family's rich and varied history,  I don't need to say how unique your family is in all the many things you have accomplished and all the experiences all of you have gained in achieving the creation of BCR.       It would make fascinating reading and at the least should be put in writing as a gift to your family.

 

Personally I find Jamie an amazing person with unlimited talents and drive and I don't really know her (not that I wouldn't love