Jade and Armani Leopards Get Room to Roam

Vern and Chuck Stairs connect Kanawha’s old cage to Jade and Armani Leopards’ cat a tat.

Nothing is ever easy!

We are building this wonderful, 2.5 acre Vacation Rotation enclosure for our cats to take turns in, and creating a tunnel system to move tigers from all across the road to get them to the new spot when we come to Bengali Tiger’s cat-a-tat. Bengali is ancient and suffers from arthritis, so his open top cage is sufficient to hold him, but it stands between the younger, stronger tigers and the new Vacation Rotation acreage.

We had been discussing an internal tunnel, across his cage, or roofing his cage, but that area is 48 feet by 120 feet, so no roofing system that we have ever used can span that kind of distance. We ran a number of designs up and down the flag pole, but any modification to the cage will be as expensive and probably more difficult than what we ultimately decided;

Tear it down and start over.

Those words didn’t come easily; but in the long run, to make the cage usable for all tigers, young or old, that’s going to be the best bet. The new area will still be 48 x 120 but will be a 15 foot high, straight wall up, with a five foot, 45 degree cantilever at the top. We think we can complete it in about two or three weeks and will have an enclosure that can house any of our cats.

During the renovation Bengali Tiger will move over to the tiger enclosure between Bella and Alex Tigers. That should be pretty exciting for all three of those Tigers and TJ will likely find it to be intriguing even though he is on the other side of Bella. This is an expense that we had not calculated into the $200,000 cost of the 2.5 ac Vacation Rotation enclosure, but we knew we would have to do something to make it “tiger proof.” This way we get a lot more use out of the space for any of our big cats to enjoy.

You can help us make all of these cage expansions possible by donating here: