The highlight of the day was our visit to Cat Tales, a small zoo outside Spokane which specializes in big cats, and also has, for some reason, two black bears, as well. A lot of the cats, and the bears, were rescued from bad situations, while others were donated.
The best thing about this place is that you can see the animals so close up. The bad thing is that the enclosures are so small. But there are signs around, pointing out that most of these animals were rescued from terrible situations, and if they weren't here, they would be dead. The signs also say that, if you think the facilities should be better, you're welcome to donate money to improve them! The place survives on private donations, and gets no public funding.
There's a zoological school on the premises, too, and most of the people we met were students at one stage or another of their training. They were great! They obviously love the animals, and they know everything about them. If you ask, they can tell you the history of each animal, and the history of the animal in general. They know how many there are in zoos and refuges, and how many are left in the wild, and what their habits are, and...everything you could want to know. They know each animal's personality, likes and dislikes--it's amazing! They were wonderful!
When we first went in, we saw the tigers. There are two enclosures, one containing two Bengal tigers, one containing two Siberian tigers. They all have names, which are posted on the outsides of the cages, along with the names of the people who have "adopted" them (i.e., people who have agreed to donate funds for their upkeep). In the first cage were Romeo and Juliet, who are not star-crossed lovers, but are two-year-old brother and sister; their parents are also at the zoo, in another area. The keeper called them "cubs" but they look pretty big to me! Romeo was very active and wanted to play, and Juliet wanted to sleep. Every once in a while he'd fall down on her and try to wrestle with her, and she'd roar at him.
In the next cage were two tigers whose names I've now forgotten (I'm lousy with names!), who were much older. They were the first tigers born at the zoo, in 1991. They were beautiful, too!
Then there were the bobcats. There are several of these, and I guess they're not that sociable with each other, since they're kept in separate cages. The first we saw was Pinball, who is so named because when he walks around his cage, he bounces off of things. He's blind and hard of hearing, a condition caused by mistreatment by his former owner, who abandoned him in an empty house when he moved. Pinball could never survive in the wild, but he's safe here.
We moved on to the jaguars, both spotted and black; the lions, who were mostly in their dens by this time, trying to escape the heat; the lynxes, who also were in their dens. We couldn't see much of them either, but one of the keepers coaxed a lynx out of her den for just a moment; she was rescued from someone who had trapped her in the wild as a cub, and then tried to make a pet of her. He kept her in his garage, where she slept on the concrete floor (which gave her arthritis), and fed her canned cat food, but not enough of it, so that she nearly starved to death. She was finally rescued and came to live at Cat Tales.
Most of the animals have stories like these. The bears, too, were rescued from a bad home, but they live well here.
And then, Lulu got to feed a lion and a tiger.
At this place, for $10, the trainer will help you feed a lion or tiger. So we paid our $10, and got a bag of meat, and the trainer took Lulu to the lion's cage. It's not as dangerous as it sounds: there's a plexiglass enclosure you have to stand in, and you put a piece of meat on a stick and poke the stick through a hole to the lion. Lulu fed Yambo, a huge male lion. By this time it was pretty hot, and Yambo wasn't that interested in food, so the keeper had to coax him to get up. He came over and languidly ate a couple of pieces of meat, and then he turned his back on us and lay down. So the keeper took Lulu over to the tiger, Ceylon (mother of those two "cubs," Romeo and Juliet), and she was much more interested. She grabbed the meat off the stick as fast as Lulu could give it to her. Lulu was thrilled by the whole experience!
Then we headed toward the petting zoo, but got sidetracked by the white tigers. There are two of them, and they are so beautiful! One was swimming in her pool for a while, and the other was prowling the fence, watching us watching him. The keeper there told me that the last white tiger in the wild was captured in 1951, and sent to the zoo in Washington, D.C. There are white tigers living now in captivity, but as far as we know, there are none left in the wild. These two tigers were donated to Cat Tales for breeding purposes, and they're just beautiful. At one point, the male got very upset about something and rushed the fence and roared at some people. It was a family, and they had 3 toddlers with them. I assumed it was because the tiger saw the little kids and thought they should be dinner, but the keeper told me it was because the father was a tall, husky man with sunglasses on, and the tiger doesn't like big men with glasses.
We finally tore ourselves away from the tigers and went to the petting zoo, where Lulu bought some feed for the chickens and the goats, and we watched the Chinese geese and ducks and rabbits go about their day. The Chinese geese were just beautiful, and I asked the keeper if they have good dispositions. He laughed and said, "Not particularly," and told me that a woman used to work there who now wrestles tigers. Hank, the male goose, chased her up her on top of the cage one day and wouldn't let her down. She's more afraid of Hank than she is of a tiger!
After Lulu had finished talking to all the animals, we left. But we'll go back there again: it was a great experience!
