April 9 2018

Big Cat Updates

Jennifer Ruszczyk’s Coordinator Notes for 4/8/2018

We had a great team of volunteers and interns today.

Since we are worming our cats this week we fasted the cats this morning so the cats would be hungry and take their medications. We were able to start cleaning a little earlier than normal which gave us extra time at the end of the day.

We had two awesome work groups come in and we were able to rake and weed eat 1/2 of Gingers cage and all of the cage and areas next to Apollo. They look great and we would not have been able to do so much with out the great work groups.

We got Big Cat Operant sign offs done, Keeper Tour sign offs done, and Alex intern passed her map test.

We had lots of tours and even though we had some IT problems with check in we were able to push past it and get all the guests on tours and hearing about the cats.

MORE TIDBITS:

Another 6,000 pounds of the cat’s ‘mush’ arrived so everyone scurried to work together unloading the truck and quickly getting it in a very organized fashion into the walk-in freezer.

S.A.V.E. Award (Scratch's Award for Volunteer Excellence)

For outstanding volunteer service, the March SAVE Award goes to Mary Lou Geis!

Mary Lou has been a Big Cat Rescuer for just over 20 years! She serves on the board of Big Cat Rescue. Mary Lou is our most senior volunteer in the program and has seen the growth of the sanctuary over the past two decades. Thanks to Mary Lou countless little and big cats have enjoyed the very best care possible! A donation of $1000 has been made in your honor to Panthera to Save Leopards.

The leopard is likely the most persecuted large cat in the world. Extinct in six countries and possibly extinct in six additional countries, leopards have vanished from at least 49 percent of their historic range in Africa and 84 percent of their historic range in Eurasia.

The species is threatened by illegal killing for their skins and other body parts used for ceremonial regalia, conflict with local people, rampant bushmeat poaching, and poorly managed trophy hunting.

In southern Africa, as many as 2,500 leopards are killed each year for their skins. With fewer than 5,000 leopard remaining in South Africa, this illegal killing poses a significant threat to their survival.

Many leopards are killed so their skins can be used by local religious groups, such as the Shembe, for ceremonial garb. Leopard furs are a crucial element of traditional dress during the Shembe Festival, an annual gathering of Shembe members. After discovering that as many as 15,000 illegal leopard skins were being used, Panthera initiated the Furs for Life Leopard Project in 2013.

Working with digital designers, Panthera created high-quality and affordable faux leopard skin capes. More than 14,000 capes have already been donated and another 4,000 are set to be distributed by 2018.

The Faux skins are gaining increasing acceptance as viable alternatives to real leopard skins. Panthera’s research has indicated that the use of real skins has already decreased by 50% preventing hundreds of Leopard deaths each year.

One of these alternative skins can be purchased for just $30, meaning a SAVE Award donation of $1,000 funds 33!

panthera.org/furs-for-life

NOTE: MANY of the photos you enjoy on Big Cat Rescue’s Social Media pages were taken by MaryLou Geis

Keeper Corner & Fun Photos

Big Cat Times

FREE digital copy of the Spring 2018 Big Cat Times.

It’s 32 full color pages (4MB) so if that’s too big for your phone, you can download to your computer. Here is the direct link https://catrescue.myshopify.com/products/big-cat-times-magazine-2018-spring

Find all previous issues as PDF downloads at https://bigcatrescue.org/big-cat-times/

Big Cat Rescue pays for the printing and distribution, four times per year, of our Big Cat Times magazine. In the last couple of years our distribution mailing list has grown by leaps and bounds. This is a pretty time consuming and costly project.

If YOU enjoy getting the magazine in your mail box and would like to see it continue with four printed issues a year, please consider making a donation at https://bigcatrescue.org/donate/ so we can continue to support this project.

Creating Sanctuary

Creating Sanctuary – If you are lucky enough to have an animal in your life, you know how much joy they can bring, how much personality they have, and how capable they are of feeling a full range of emotions.

And, are you ready for some good news? Do you want to hear some amazing stories about people who are working to make life better for animals?

We are inviting you to >>Join Us Now<< for a free online event that we’re participating in.

It’s a really informative interview series called: “Creating Sanctuary for Animals – How 21 Heroes are Saving Animals’ Lives”

https://bigcatrescue.org/creating-sanctuary-carole-baskin-interview/

And it’s free!

Facebook Live Video Replays

Excited Servals get snacks. See how Ginger’s cage is set up. Hear Kathryn explain why we are constantly raking and picking up leaves. They also chat about things like regular de-worming, serval traits, serval hunting, etc.

6,000 pounds of Mush arrives! Remember, this is only one kind of meat the cats get each day.

Every 6-8 weeks volunteers at Big Cat Rescue offload 6,000 pounds of carnivore diet into our freezers. That’s not even counting all of the chicken, turkey and other specialty meats that arrive frozen through out the month.

This 6,000 pounds is just the ‘mush’ which is part of the cats’ daily diet. They also get other meats which come on different shipments. As you can imagine these deliveries of meat and their freight expense is pretty costly.

You can help cover these costs by donating at https://bigcatrescue.org/donate/