Our Mission is to provide the best home we can for the cats in our care, end abuse of big cats in captivity, and prevent extinction of big cats in the wild.
Our Goal is for our donors to find their gifts to us to be among the most satisfying they make by accomplishing our mission in the most financially responsible manner possible. We consistently receive Charity Navigator’s highest 4 star rating and are in the 1% of nonprofits who have received Charity Navigator’s perfect numerical score of 100.
Visit Big Cat Rescue
The only way to visit the cats is on a pre-paid and pre-reserved guided tour. Â Tours fill up quickly!
Big Cat Rescue is Caring for Big Cats and Ending the Trade
Join us in the freedom fight for exotic cats! Â They were designed to live free; not in cages. Â The number one cause of abuse is the practice of posing with big cats and their cubs because it creates a flood of discarded cats that serve no conservation value and end up dead or in conditions that are often even worse. Â You will find us to be completely transparent in our values, care of our 60+ wild cats, and finances.
Big Cat Year End Update
2018 has flown by and we are SO grateful and thankful for your continuing support of our cats and sanctuary throughout the year!
As you plan your year-end, tax-deductible charitable donations, we hope you will consider a gift to the exotic cats at Big Cat Rescue. The first $12,500 in donations will be matched dollar for dollar by Larry and Pam Trissel, so your gift will do twice as much good for our big cats.
2018 will go down in our history as the year our rehabilitation program for wild-born native Florida bobcats was bursting with bobcats – 12 total, including a record 8 orphaned kittens. We began 2018 rehabilitating and later releasing four adult bobcats (Cooper, Teuci, Aphrodite and Noel). In the spring we took in three orphaned bobcat kittens from two rescues and gave them names befitting St. Patrick’s Day (Clover, Lucky and Shamrock). And this summer we rescued five more orphaned kittens from four separate rescues and gave them patriotic names (Alpha, Bravo, Echo, Foxtrot and Tango). As we end 2018, all but three of the 12 have completed our rehabilitation program and been released back into the wild to live free…where they belong. We hope to release Alpha, Bravo and Tango early next year.
This year we will put your year-end donations to good use for our rehab bobcats. Florida is very hot and humid so we would like to purr-chase a number of shade trees to go around the perimeter of the two newest rehab enclosures as well as around our rehab recovery building (where injured bobcats recover after surgery).
We also have a crucial need for two new sets of heavy-duty washers and dryers – you’d be amazed at the massive amount of laundry we do in order to keep the bedding clean for cats confined in the hospital, recovery building and rehab recovery building!
Thank YOU so much for your amazing support of our sanctuary and cats! We hope the cats can count on you one more time in 2018 as you make your year-end, tax-deductible charitable donations. It is only because of your financial support that we can continue to rescue abused, neglected and abandoned exotic cats and rehabilitate injured and orphaned wild Florida bobcats.
Best wishes from your Big Cat Rescue family for a purrfectly healthy and happy New Year!
If you prefer to send a check, please mail it by December 31st to Howard Baskin at Big Cat Rescue at 12802 Easy Street, Tampa, Florida 33625-3702.
Can we count on your help?
Did you know every time you make a purchase on Amazon you could be donating to Big Cat Rescue at no cost to you??
You can automatically help feed our cats at NO COST TO YOU when you select Big Cat Rescue as your charity on Amazon Smile and shop Amazon Smile instead of Amazon.com.
The Most Important Thing YOU Can Do to Save Big Cats
This bill called the Big Cat Public Safety Act is the most important piece of legislation to ever be introduced to protect lions, tigers, and other exotic wild cats from being kept as pets and in miserable roadside zoos. IF YOU ONLY DO ONE THING TO SAVE BIG CATS; THIS IS THE ACTION TO TAKE TODAY!!!
Watch Our Cats LIVE on explore.org!
Big Cat Rescue, one of the world’s largest accredited sanctuaries for exotic cats, is a leading advocate for ending the abuse of captive big cats and saving wild cats from extinction.  We are the most hated, feared and lied about by circuses, backyard breeders, roadside zoos, cub petting pimps apseudo-sanctuariesies because we are the most effective at ending the abuse of big cats.  We wear that as a badge of honor.
We are home to lions, tigers, bobcats, cougars, servals, caracals, jaguar and other species most of whom have been abandoned, abused, orphaned, saved from being turned into fur coats, or retired from performing acts.
- The sanctuary began rescuing exotic cats in Nov. 4, 1992.
- The non profit 501 c 3 sanctuary is home to many exotic big cats
The cats at Big Cat Rescue are here for a variety of reasons, including:
- Abandoned by owners who wrongly thought they would make good pets
- Abused by owners in order to force them to perform
- Retired from performing acts
- Saved from being slaughtered to make fur coats
- Rescued as babies after hunters killed their mothers. Â See our Bobcat Rehab and Release work
- The non-profit organization is:
- Accredited by the Global Federation of Sanctuaries
- Certified by Independent Charities of America as a “Best in America Charity”
- Member of the Species Survival Network
- Rated 4 Stars by Charity Navigator (their highest rating) and has one of the highest scores of any animal based charity
- Part of a global coalition including HSUS, IFAW, WWF, GFAS, Born Free and other animal protection groups who are working together to end big cat abuse.
- The sanctuary is situated on 67Â acres in the Citrus Park area of north Tampa.
CEO Targeted by Murder for Hire
Joe Schreibvogel Maldonado-Passage, aka “Joe Exotic,” was arrested after being indicted by a Federal Grand Jury on two counts of “murder for hire” for seeking to hire someone to murder Carole Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue. More here
