National Tiger Sanctuary
/The National Tiger Sanctuary is only about 30 minutes from our Missouri home; a tram tour of the place on a sunny spring day was a great ‘experience’ for a spring birthday in our family. We arrived about twenty minutes before our tour time…plenty of time to photograph the sculpture above the gate
And sculptures around the building.
There was also a pile of damaged big cat ‘toys’ behind the building.
The tram tour passes between rows of large double/triple wire enclosures – sometimes for single big cats and sometimes shared spaces for siblings or cats that appreciate company. The cats looked healthy although some are hampered by their experience prior to being rescued (i.e. declawed, teeth filed, finicky eaters). Even though the name is ‘tiger sanctuary’ we saw more lions! There have been two ‘surprise’ litters born at a sanctuary (a group of rescued adult lions…the male supposedly had a vasectomy…but two lionesses were having litters!). The litters were 4 cubs each and are almost adults now…so the numbers are skewed toward lions.
We heard vocalizations of cats several times while we were there. Our tour guide said that cool days in spring and fall are not as smelly as warm, humid days. Good to know…made us even more glad we went in April.
There were white tigers and ligers – rescued from breeders or entertainment companies. They tend to have genetic-type health problems in addition (sometimes) to problems with ill treatment. Hopefully the breeding of these big cats is slowing down/stopping.
The sanctuary rescues other animals as well. The lemurs seemed to enjoy having people around; some of them had been ‘pets’ that became problematic for their owner.
There are also some wolf dogs and farm type animals. Providing a ‘forever home’ to all the animals rescued is what the sanctuary is about (not just tigers).
