Tabitha

Female Ocelot born in 1983 – 2/2/04
Arrived here 6/17/97

Her story is repeated all too often by greedy people looking to make a profit off an animal. She supplied kittens to the pet trade until she was 13 and quit producing. She was unceremoniously dumped at an auction where she was in the company of pigs and goats and people with even less attractive manners. She only brought $100.00 because of her age, but her new owner thought it was worth a shot to get just one more kitten out of her. A year later, when they had been unsuccessful they decided to sell her.
When we arrived, she was living in a small wire crate that would not enable her to get out of her own urine and feces. As a result of living this way for a year, the fur had been burned off her underbelly and the backside of her haunches were burned past the flesh, into the muscle. Untreated ear mites had caused her to scratch her own ears off trying to alleviate the itching. She was bony and listless and looked like she would die any day, but she wasn’t going to die in those conditions, so our Co-Founder paid the $1700.00 demanded for her ransom and brought her home to live her last days on Easy Street.
That was in 1997 and now she is fully furred and has a huge cat-a-tat with an underground cave, logs, bushes and flowers and gets special treatment due to her advanced years and incurable heart worm condition. This photo was taken in December of 2000. We no longer buy animals to save them because we now have to turn away more than 300 unwanted exotic “pets” each year. Tabitha was found curled up in a ball where she had been warming in the sun on 2/2/04.