2012 12 31 Carole Diary

2012 Annual Report

Big Cat Rescue is more than just a place that provides permanent care for big cats. It is a movement; a change in the tide of human perceptions and is the combined effort of more than 79,000 supporters. If you are one of them, you are a Big Cat Rescuer and the following is the great work YOU did! If you haven’t helped yet, you can do so now at the top right of the screen or here: http://bigcatrescue.org/donate

Big Cat Rescue’s Mission Statement: Big Cat Rescue’s dual mission is to provide the best home we can for the cats in our care and educate the public about the plight of these majestic animals, both in captivity and in the wild, to end abuse and avoid extinction. We are Caring for Cats and Ending the Trade

Advances: With your help we are winning in the battle for compassion! Up until 2003 the number of requests for rescues we had to turn down due to lack of space or funds had roughly doubled every other year, to 312 that year. We feared it would double again to over 500 in 2004. Instead, it has steadily declined since then thanks to the passage of a federal bill and several state bills that restrict the ownership of exotic cats. This year there were “only” 85 big cats who came to our attention as being abandoned. Note that 69 of them came from failed pseudo sanctuaries. We were able to take in 7. We offered to take all of the cats who were cougar size or smaller, if their owners would contract to never own another exotic cat, but the rest refused. We just do not have enough Senior Keeper staff to take on more lions or tigers than the three we took this year.

Volgistics became our new time tracking service on Jan 1, 2012 and has replaced our use of Freshbooks. Everyone seems to like the big buttons and easy check in and check out process.

Animal Care: By the end of this year, 96 of our 101 exotic cats are over the age of 12; 80 of those are over the age of 15; and 19 of those are over the age of 20. This is well beyond how long they are designed to live in the wild and much older than most zoo cats. This is a testament to the excellent animal care we provide, but we are dealing with many more age related illnesses and are losing more of our big cat friends every year.

We use operant conditioning to enable much of our vet care without the necessity of anesthesia, which is very hard on the cats, but despite that, 43 of our animals had to be sedated for vet care in 2012. We also performed 6 Necropsies: (most performed for interns, all with Dr. Justin), had 4 high ticket Special Surgeries at Blue Pearl, had 2 intricate specialized surgeries by Dr. Hay, 4 on-site dentals by Dr. Peak and vaccinated 84 cats, in addition to countless trips to Ehrlich Animal Hospital to have the cats treated by our volunteer vet, Dr. Liz Wynn.

Rescues: With the help of some very special donors we were able to rescue 4 bobcats, two Savannah Cat hybrids and two kittens that were reported to be bobcats, but who turned out to be tail-less Manx. One of those bobcats was Rufus who came in to a Rehabber on Dec 5 weighing 4 lbs, with a broken jaw, split canine and comatose. They figured he had been hit by a car, but at 4 lbs couldn’t believe that he survived. After he woke up from the coma he was pretty loopy, but they figured the impact had done brain damage. They had to wire the jaw shut, tube feed him and removed the broken canine. He appeared to be blind and was having bad and frequent seizures, that ultimately cut his life short, but he touched all of us deeply.

On 12/12/12 we had another perfect USDA inspection.