Anyone ever have, or know of anyone who did have, a Big Cat as a pet? Not a hybrid,

[raccoon]

but a bobcat, cougar, mountain lion, tiger, lion, etc.

DISCLAIMER: Don't try this at home.

Anyone care to share? (Even if it's a historical figure who had the cat.)


(Here's what made me think of this. Article in Computerworld about
"More Mac users took to OS X Mountain Lion last month even as its explosive growth in August slowed dramatically...&quot

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. We had a DUer w/ a bobcat. Can't remember who it was, tho.

[mythology]

2. Growing up in small town Texas,

my neighbors had a leopard. Chauncy was it's name. Very docile, but once you watched the cat snap a frozen chicken in half in mid air, you remembered how dangerous she (I think Chauncy was a she, but it's been years) could be. When I was 6 or 7, she once took my hand in her mouth and wanted to show me something. So she tugged, not hard enough to bite, but I remember looking at the indentations in my hand afterward and being more than a bit nervous.

The cat normally stayed in a pen in their yard, but they would let her in the house sometimes.

[Brigid]

3. Nope.

Years ago, I read in the paper about some guy around here who had a cougar. People who do that are idiots. Even my house cats can be unpredictable; let alone a wild cat. I'll stick with house cats, thank you very much.

[HopeHoops]

4. Does this one count?

[raccoon]

7. Is that your animal companion? Good picture, don't know how you got him to pose. nt

[HopeHoops]

8. He's 15 now. That was 3 years ago. I can pile anything I want on him.

He just purrs. Hell, if you look at him he purrs.

[Arugula Latte]

20. I.Love.Him.

Seriously, send me your kitty. I NEED to kiss that white belly right fucking now!!!

[HopeHoops]

31. It's not all that white anymore - his grooming habits have gone down hill.

He did sleep cuddled into me (and purring) all last night. Belly rubs have always been his thing, although he does like belly blatts too (mouth farts in the belly). His health is fading overall and checking him for breathing is a morning ritual now.

[Arugula Latte]

34. Oh no!

I'm so sorry. I recently lost a kitty and your post brought tears to my eyes.

[HopeHoops]

37. As long as he keeps purring, I figure "quality of life" is just fine.

I'd rather he pass quietly in his sleep like our rabbit recently did than have to put him down. I've never encountered a more cuddly kitty, but Peter and Tink have been well trained by him. They're both snugglebunnies.

[HappyMe]

5. Not that I know of.

Never a good idea to have any wild animal as a pet.

[HopeHoops]

9. Not true. We took in a deformed cottontail (turned out to be a hermaphrodite).

He (as we called it) was a great pet, very cuddly, and a purring sort. Yes, they purr. He would have died that night if I hadn't taken him in as a kit. He lived six years and almost two months. We recently buried him. He was just crashed out and dead one morning. I know the rabbits by markings and none of his siblings are still around. He most likely outlived them. We miss him. The dogs miss him. The cats miss him. Yes, he was wild, and yes, it's illegal in PA to take such a critter in, but what choice did I have? He had no fear. At least the two instincts he DID have were grooming and using a potty.

[HappyMe]

13. A rabbit is one thing,

a mountain lion or some such critter is another thing entirely.

Sorry that he died. At least you provided him with some loving and comfortable years.

[HopeHoops]

14. Hell, he scratched me all to shit. I saw a shrink, held out one arm and said "amateur"...

Then the other and said "Professional". She got a really shocked look on her face. The right arm was sideways slashes, the left length-wise. In her panic state I said, "We have a rabbit."

Anyone who has contemplated suicide (such as me) knows that a sideways slash isn't serious. You have to go with the length of the vein to kill yourself. She obviously knew that.

He stopped clawing at about 3 years old. I so miss him. He'd cuddle and purr for hours. But he always let me know when he had to drop bunny berries. Fuck. I'm crying now.

[HappyMe]

16. ....

Damn, now I feel teary too.



Okay, how about some good news.
My love and I have decided to get married. I have to go to city hall shortly to get the required paperwork or whatever. The big day is on Halloween.

[HopeHoops]

17. We were married on a 13th. People kept saying "It will never last - bad luck" - 25 years now.

The best to you and your near-future spouse!!!

May BOOOOOth of you be happy for a long time.

[Kali]

26. congrats!

one of my sons' friends is doing the same, he is a big horror movie freak.

[harmonicon]

29. Huh.

Two of my good friends are getting married this Halloween. It never occurred to me that that might be a common day for it.

[Mojorabbit]

22. I do wildlife rehab and specialize in wild rabbits

Every now and again you get one that is mentally challenged that would be suitable for a pet. 99.9 percent of the time though, they are not pet material. Domestic rabbits are a much better choice. I do over 300 wild orphaned or injured wild buns a year and release to the wild. In all the years I have been doing them only a handful were pet material.
They are adorable aren't they?

[nolabear]

25. You are a god to me! We thought of rabbit raisers as magicians in wildlife rehab.

I imagine it's easier now and bunny formula is better but when I rehabbed wild animals thirty years back those poor little things so often died. There was a wonderful Lumbee man who took on our rabbits and the hopeless cases and damned if he didn't work miracles.

I doff my furry chapeau.

[Mojorabbit]

38. Thanks. LOL

They are very difficult to do and there still is not a good formula out there for them but I seem to have a way with them for some reason.
I also do armadillos which also are hard to do. Here is one sleeping.
[IMG][/IMG]
Here is a baby cottontail
[IMG][/IMG]

[HopeHoops]

32. Curiously, although devoid of natural instincts, he was extremely smart.

He studied things like the hinges on his cage, comparing them to those on the bathroom door. We have a very large master bathroom so that's where his cage was. When someone bathed, he groomed himself. If you sat on the toilet, he sat on his potty. He even figured out how to open his cage at one point and just sat there waiting for someone to find him so he could gloat.

Perhaps the weirdest thing was when we found piss all over the wall. We cleaned it up and put up contact paper so it would be easier to clean. One morning I was taking the morning drain when I heard him shuffle. I looked over. Looked back at the toilet. Looked at the rabbit again and thought, "no way". I started sitting down to pee in that bathroom and the piss on the wall magically stopped. He was simply imitating me.

We recently had a nest in the front yard (common thing around here). My wife noticed it after mowing over it (also common) and as usual, all of the tiny kits were fine. We also have a lot of neighbors with outdoor cats and such nests often meet their demise before the kits are mature. As usual, we checked on them every few days. The last time we did, three shot out in different directions. One of my daughters grabbed the one heading for the driveway while my wife got the one that headed for the road. My middle daughter grabbed the one that ran under a bush and it SCREAMED! Out of nowhere, both parents showed up and watched while we returned them to the nest. They still needed a couple of days of nursing, and as best I could tell they all matured normally (distinctive white stripe on their heads like their mother). After that, the mother showed no fear of us within as little as a foot. She clearly knew we weren't going to hurt the kits. She's also the only one we don't have the dogs chase out of the garden (just chase, they wouldn't hurt one).

[davsand]

6. I make it a policy not to keep pets that could/would eat or kill me.

That same logic carries over into my decision not to keep anything venomous as a pet...



Laura

[HopeHoops]

10. What fun is life without an 8' alligator in the bathtub?

[davsand]

11. Taking a bath becomes either bobbing for apples or a form of russian roulette.

Either way I'm gonna be much happier giving that a miss...


All joking aside, we knew a guy who was into venomous reptiles and arachnids and it creeped me out to go there for any reason. I was forever wondering if anybody had made the great escape and was the escapee hiding in or under the sofa. A trip to the bathroom was almost panic inducing because you had to walk through the room where he kept all the enclosures and cages.



Laura

[NV Whino]

12. I had an acquaintance years ago who had a mountain lion as a pet

He worked for Africa USA at the time.

Then there was the guy down the road who had several "retired" lions. Quite a spectacle when they got to roaring.

[nolabear]

15. I once worked with the terrible outcome of this bad idea. Wildlife rehab.

I have many stories but no time. I'll come back and post later when I do.

No, don't do this at home.

[warrprayer]

18. Got to pet Black Panther cub

... at a truck stop when it was let out to pee. It was actually a black leopard, black panther is a generic term. It had blue eyes! Actually it was much larger than a domestic cat, don't know the age but it was about 2 feet high at the back. I had to overcome my fear to reach out and pet it - the fur was so thick and had the texture of fine silk. He closed his eyes in pleasure and tilted his head back...

[Doc_Technical]

19. Heather Ryan

Playboy Playmate of the Month July 1967
owned an ocelot.

[mysuzuki2]

21. No cats, but I knew some people once who adopted a wolf pup.

They also had a new born baby at the time which I thought was kind of a risk. The pup was very friendly and playful. He acted much like any dog. BUT he was NOT gentle. He played very rough. As an adolescent there were some dominance interactions as he began to feel his oats. They finally got rid of him after he literally ate the kitchen floor and most of a kitchen cabinet. Not a good idea to have a wild animal weighing 120 lbs in your house.

[Mojorabbit]

23. They have cougars at the wildlife center I am affiliated with

Their paws are huge. They never tamed down that I could tell.

[NNadir]

24. Katherine Hepburn had a leopard...

...in "Bringing Up Baby" with Cary Grant.

It was one of our favorite movies when we were first married, very happy times.

That's as close as I get to knowing someone of that nature.

[nolabear]

27. Okay...yes I knew people who had wild cats. It is a terrible thing to do to a big cat.

I worked in wildlife rehab thirty years back and we had a mountain lion, a couple of bobcats, some wolves, several black bears and multitudes of other smaller mammals and birds that either were victims of construction or cars, and sometimes dumb but wellmeaning citizens (oh, those fawns...)

Wild animals raised as pets are functionally insane. They cannot reat humans the way they would treat other animals, they are triggered in ways that predators are triggered and even their owners can do that. They are bored, unfulfilled, often poorly fed even if intentions are good. They cannot relate to their fellows in a healthy way if they are imprinted on people. Sometimes that can be helped, sometimes not. Their urine is strong for marking and smells to high heaven. They get ill like any animal does and it's hard to find a vet that will treat them (I actually talked my own dentist into doing a root canal on our mountain lion once. I'd probably be arrested today but it worked and it was what we could get.)

I adored our critters and spent hours trying to make their lives better. And I thoroughly appreciate the lure of a lovely baby. But they grow into strong, frustrated, wild animals and it's truly sad to see them unable to be what they were meant to be.

Bad idea all around.

[raccoon]

33. That is really sad. Thanks for posting. nt

[csziggy]

28. Ted Turner was rumored to have some panthers or cougars

On the plantation he owned (owns?) in the next county over. Some of the rumors claimed that the big cats got loose on occasion.

During the time those rumors were going around a local forester saw an animal cross the road less than a half mile from our farm. It had a round head, round ears, and long tail. He watched it jump off the bank on one side of the paved road, land on the center line, then leap up on the bank on the other side of the road - far too long a distance for a bobcat or domestic cat to jump in two leaps.

If that had been one of Turner's big cats, it would have been a good distance from his plantation - at least thirty miles. Back then, the plantations around our farm were still intact and there were tens of thousands of acres of land managed primarily for hunting and for limited timber production. There could have been enough area to support some wild panthers though officially there were not supposed to be any in North Florida.

[LWolf]

30. No.

For many years, I lived down the road from a ranch that kept and trained exotic animals for movies. They weren't pets, even the best-behaved. I drove past twice a day on my way to and from work and often stopped to watch them working. Nothing pet-like about the interactions between big cat and human.

I've often wondered, as my pet cat demands attention or play, what our relationship would be if she were bigger than I. I love her, but I don't think I'd really want to experience that.

[Arkansas Granny]

35. An acquaintance of mine had a bobcat at one time.

They had it de-fanged, de-clawed and had been told to never feed it raw meat. There were some other things they had been told to do or to never do, but I can't remember all the details.

Personally, I don't think wild animals should be kept as pets if it's possible to release them in the wild.

[lastlib]

36. A high-school buddy of mine had a mountain lion for about three years....

...eventually the conservation dept came & confiscated it (afraid it would get loose, and they didn't want to have to explain it).

[Mr.Bill]

39. Back in the 70s, I knew a guy who owned a tire shop.

His "security" was a mountain lion who was kept in a cage where everyone could see him while the store was open, then turned loose after closing. He never got robbed.