FL Six emaciated tigers and lion taken from private owner’s backyard
At the following link is a story that ran on CNN about 5 tigers and a lion who were being starved and were more than 100lbs underweight. The Florida Wildlife Commission (FWC) was reported to have been investigating the owner for two years and believed the cats were starving but couldn’t prove it. The owner, Susan MacKay, was said to have a tiger in her freezer that she was feeding to these cats, and still the FWC did nothing. When the FWC did finally take action they called Vernon Yates because he will pick up anything they ask him to take. He already has 200 exotic animals on 2.5 acres in a residential neighborhood next door to an elementary school.
In the clip you can see Yates yelling at the obviously stressed cats who were being kept, two to a cage, in circus wagons. If Yates cannot control his temper in front of a CNN camera crew, it is depressing to think how he must behave when no one is looking, which is most of the time.
One tiger appears to have lost half of her tail and the cats are roaring at each other, baring their teeth and threatening violence. In the video Vernon claims that if he gets the cats he will "find a new home for them," but legitimate zoos don’t want castoffs from the pet trade, so the only buyers will likely be similar or worse situations than where the cats came from.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2007/11/12/sot.fl.starving.tigers.lion.wtsp
