Toystoretom
Living Legend
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2006
- Messages
- 2,449
I know you guys hate cats but I have a few pics from the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge at Eureka Springs. Danno, Gunshots, and myself rode over there Sunday Afternoon and took the tour. Turpentine Creek is a rescue operation for big cats, and without their help all of these animals would have been put to sleep. These are not zoo quality cats, and each has its own story. The young lady who gave the tour was perfect for the job and was very knowledgeable. Most of these cats came from illegal breeders, private individuals, circuses and the like.
These cats are not pets and I'll give you a few reasons why. There were playtoys in the pens and the habitats for the cats to play with. 16 pound bowling balls were quite popular, and the tigers and lions would bat them around like your housecat would a nerf ball. They liked bowling pins also. Liked to eat them, that is. The panther had an ATV tire ripped in half, steel cords simply torn apart. One lion had an 8 or 10 foot tractor tire and could pick it up and throw it like a frisbee. It was stuck in a tree when we came by. The tigers were huge, but they had a bigger cat that passed away recently. If you cross a Lion with a Tiger you have the possibility of two different kinds of offspring. One is a Tilon, which is a smaller sickly animal that probably is genetically unsound and they usually die quickly or are destroyed. The other is a Liger, which is a huge, good natured cat that is sterile, like a mule. The one they had, when standing normally ( not up on its hind legs or anything like that) was 8 feet tall and weighed over a 1000 pounds. Theirs died of old age and was close to twenty years old at the time.
Here are a few pics and I'll post more later with stories...
These cats are not pets and I'll give you a few reasons why. There were playtoys in the pens and the habitats for the cats to play with. 16 pound bowling balls were quite popular, and the tigers and lions would bat them around like your housecat would a nerf ball. They liked bowling pins also. Liked to eat them, that is. The panther had an ATV tire ripped in half, steel cords simply torn apart. One lion had an 8 or 10 foot tractor tire and could pick it up and throw it like a frisbee. It was stuck in a tree when we came by. The tigers were huge, but they had a bigger cat that passed away recently. If you cross a Lion with a Tiger you have the possibility of two different kinds of offspring. One is a Tilon, which is a smaller sickly animal that probably is genetically unsound and they usually die quickly or are destroyed. The other is a Liger, which is a huge, good natured cat that is sterile, like a mule. The one they had, when standing normally ( not up on its hind legs or anything like that) was 8 feet tall and weighed over a 1000 pounds. Theirs died of old age and was close to twenty years old at the time.
Here are a few pics and I'll post more later with stories...
]
