I am grateful for the opportunity to live in paradise
I walked through what used to be a wall, into our living room this morning and looked out over Rocky Creek. I had a moment of Deja Vu where it was the first time I walked through that opening, when I remodeled this house back in the 90s. The house has changed, but the view is still spectacularly unspoiled.
I am grateful for Salsa’s content management system. Yesterday I needed to write 70 letters, all different, to our 6407 of our supporters to ask them individually to contact their member of congress. Our lobbyist, Jason Osborne, had met with their member and now we were asking them to go in and show their support for our bill to ban the private possession of big cats. That would take me weeks, but I did it in hours. I thought of a way to make it better this morning and can still edit the letters before they go out in the morning.
I am thankful for the volunteers who are caring for the cats this morning so that I can go sit beside my mother, on the back row at church and then take her to lunch. My Dad is suffering from a cold and won’t be there today. These Sundays with her are precious and I couldn’t do it if not for the huge support base that makes it possible.
My 2016 written comment on the Federal Register
sci·en·tif·ic meth·od
noun
My experience with hand raised felids vs mother raised felids spans back to 1978, and includes hundreds of domestic, purebred, and 20 exotic species. This scientific method of observation, measurement and experimentation has led to the testing and formulation of best practices for the raising of captive felids. My hypotheses; that kittens who are raised by their mothers, until they are weaned, are healthier and live longer, than those raised by human hands has been proven.
(Jamie circa 1985 or so holding Lamborghini the tortoiseshell Himalayan)
1978-1984 MiCarCo Cattery. Before I knew how deleterious it is to breed to a human contrived standard, I bred and showed Persians and Himalayans in the Cat Fancier's Association. I had an entire wall of my home covered in ribbons that were won by my cats and produced many grand champions. I have since learned that there is no reason to be breeding cats, while so many die in shelters, but the experience gained during that time proved, scientifically, that:
Show cats have to be the most docile of their kind in order to tolerate the noise and chaos of a show hall. They have to be tolerant of being handled by judges without striking out. Mother raised kittens did fine in those situations and consistently scored higher as they were in better overall condition than bottle raised kittens.
1978-2016 Wild Bobcat Rehab and Release. Due to the amount of time spent at vet's offices, for the issues that go along with breeding to an extreme standard for flat faced cats, I was often asked to take home a bobcat who had been hit by a car or otherwise injured or orphaned. The vet can fix them up in a matter of hours, but then it would be months of rehab before they could be released.
I've documented 48 wild bobcat situations and 29 of those were yearling, or orphaned juvenile or infant kittens at various stages of weaning. When rehabbing wildcats for the purpose of releasing them back into the wild, the primary objective is to make sure they are as healthy and wild as possible. Yearling and juvenile bobcats, who were weaned by their wild mothers, have always been the healthiest and easiest to get back on their way to a natural life. Their vigor has been proven by the fact that most of them had been hit by cars and lived to hunt another day.
The younger a bobcat kitten has been at the time of rescue, the more difficult to raise them up into healthy adults. Three bobcat kittens, who arrived with umbilical cords still attached, died very young because they were unable, despite vaccinations, to mount an appropriate immunity to typical domestic pet disease. After more than 30 years of testing the best alternative milks and the best disease prevention protocols, we still can't begin to replace their mothers.
Others survived, and eventually, after up to 18 months of work to get them fit for life in the wild, were set free. Camera traps show that these cats have survived more than a year after release, so we quit documenting the area, but there is no doubt that they would live longer, healthier lives, had they been mother raised.
1992-2016 Big Cat Rescue. Over the past 24 years I've cared for more than 200 exotic cats of 20 species, including the big cats involved in this bill: lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cougars, snow leopards, clouded leopards, and hybrids such as ligers. The sanctuary started with the rescue of over 100 bobcats, Canada lynx and Siberian lynx from fur farms from 1993-1997.
The vast majority of these were kittens, at varying stages of being weaned, but who were separated from their mothers during the rescue to prevent maternal infanticide. We didn't know any better then and took advice from the very people who are opposing measures to end their abuse of wild cats. The kittens who spent the most time with their mothers were the healthiest. The kittens who were separated from their mothers earlier were the most difficult to keep alive, and suffered the most health issues later in life, such as nutritional cataracts, frail bones, rotten teeth and less resistance to parasites and other stressors.
The emotional issues we see in bottle raised exotic cats include sucking on paws and tails until they bleed, because they didn't get sufficient suckling over months, or years, with their real mothers. They often do not know how to deal with others of their own kind and are fearful and aggressive toward them. They will often over groom, which starts as a self soothing process, like the paw and tail sucking, but results in open wounds and massive hair balls. Exotic cats who have been handled by people are more dangerous because they have no natural aversion and will reach out and try to pull people into the cage. Even in play, they are far too powerful and often maim and kill, without even trying.
A recent example was a bobcat, The Great Pretender, who died this week at the age of 24. He had been mother raised and weaned. His previous owner had tried declawing him, to make him more tractable but when that didn't work they dumped him at an exotic animal auction in 1992 where taxidermists were bidding on him. He was rescued and sired a kitten before being neutered in the 1990s. She only lived to be 14. We stopped breeding in 1997 once the Internet arrived and we discovered that none of the exotic cats in captivity would ever serve any conservation purpose.
2013-2016 Foster Kittens. In 2013 Big Cat Rescue partnered with the Humane Society of Tampa Bay to foster orphaned and abandoned kittens. We have taken in more than 375 kittens, and mothers with kittens during this time. This has given us the most hands on experience and proof that mother cats are uniquely equipped to raise their own kittens far more successfully than our best efforts.
Sometimes mother cats are dumped at county shelters along with their kittens. When we can assist a mother by giving her a quiet and sanitary environment she will raise kittens that are far healthier and better adjusted than those who arrive as orphans that are bottle raised. The mother raised kittens are fatter, have glossier coats, stronger teeth and bones, and learn how to deal with others of their own kind in an appropriate way.
The bottle raised kittens are far less thrifty and succumb to illness much more often. Once they are old enough for vaccinations that start at 6 weeks and end at 16 weeks for rabies, they are better protected, but often lack social skills with their own kind and are fearful, aggressive and more likely to bite humans. Kittens who bite their mothers get bitten back and quickly learn that you don't make friends by biting them.
Breeders and dealers in cubs emulate that by kicking and punching cubs in the face, but it's not the same, and thus the lessons learned by the cubs are not the same.
To conclude, I'd like to point out that you are asking for scientific evidence that cubs should not be hand reared and used as pay to play props, but where was the science that would have supported such an unnatural and unkind activity in the first place?
The people who breed cubs for use as photo props or to get people to donate or volunteer in their backyard menageries say they have to hand raise the cubs because the mothers will kill them, or so they will be comfortable in captivity, or so that people will see them and protect habitat for them in the wild. These are all lies and have NO science to back them up.
Mother cats will kill cubs if they feel that the situation is so dire that their expenditure of time and effort on raising a litter would be better at a later time. If mothers are killing or rejecting cubs in captivity, it isn't that there is a problem with the mother. It is the environment that is not conducive to breeding and survival.
Hand reared cats, whether domestic or exotic, lack the social skills to know how to deal with people. They are more likely to harm someone when they are big enough to do so because they lack the natural aversion to humans that would keep them from reaching out for a keeper.
All of the science on the subject shows that when people see endangered species in close proximity to humans they believe that the animals must not be endangered, or that close proximity would not be allowed. The very notion that we should captive breed endangered animals for future generations essentially states that we don't have to protect the wild, because we have them in cages. That is the antitheiss of conservation.
The only people who would oppose a complete ban on public contact with cubs of all ages and all species of exotic cat, are those who profit from prolific breeding in order to pull the cubs as quickly as possible to use for the longest period of time in their money making schemes. There is no amount of money and resources USDA can spend to make these kinds of people adhere to any rules about what age, size, etc.
The only way to end the abuse (and the violations of the Animal Welfare Act that this sort of abuse already violates) is to ban ALL public contact with all exotic cat species.
For the cats, Carole Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue
Hi, I’m Carole Baskin and 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.
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Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only and is my opinion. Closing graphic with permission from https://youtu.be/F_AtgWMfwrk