When the "Housecats" Weigh 400 lbs... or
Lordy, That's a Big Litterbox!

A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to have a close encounter with the feline kind… but these were not your average housecats who sit on your lap, demand to be fed and if we deserve it receive a purr of satisfaction at the end of the day. These were real cats, big cats – to be exact 192 full-grown lions, tigers, leopards and more… oh my. Understatement of the century.

In the middle of Indiana, not too far from the rumblings of IRL and NASCAR racers at The Indianapolis International Speedway is a place called the Exotic Feline Rescue Center (EFRC). For the cats, if they are very lucky, it is a sanctuary for life from neglect and hardship at the hands of cruel animal trainers or idiot drug dealers who’ve watched Scarface too many times. For some reason there are stupid people in this world who think if you declaw a tiger that it won’t eat you. Once they come out of the coke haze long enough to realize that they can still be dinner, they have a full-grown 400 lb tiger that they throw a sample of meat at when they aren’t too cowardly to walk up to the inadequate cage they have for this beautiful animal. It’s criminal all the way around and also makes the DEA a prime source of cats for the EFRC.

Started in 1991 with only three cats, the population finding refuge in Indiana is growing. Three more arrived the week after I was there. If you go to the website www.exoticfelinerescuecenter.org you will find out the stories of the kitties… which can be heartbreaking at times. For the ones that have been rescued there are so many more that have yet to be discovered.

Now I have wanted to go to visit EFRC since my brother Dean started going there every year – always after shooting the NASCAR Brickyard race at Indy. While the center is not open on Mondays, my brother has been volunteering with friends putting together pens and fences for years. All this time I had heard the stories about being there at dusk when all of the cats start roaring… just as if there were still on the Serengeti and not middle America. I had to see the ground shake myself… and it does.

The drive out there is uneventful, a straight run from Indianapolis with one stretch of road that looks exactly like the scene in North by Northwest where Cary Grant almost gets run over by the airplane. Just a flat stretch of road with a line of telephone poles going down it and no one else in sight. Actually a little creepy for someone who lives in the most densely populated state in the union.

So I wound my way out to the Center and was immediately greeted by Joe Tapp, the founder of the sanctuary. I had already been in touch with him courtesy of my brother and was surprised by the slight, quiet man with bloody shoes that I met (more on the bloody shoes later). He was the one that I had heard was able to pet and play with almost all of the cats on the property… the true Dr. Doolittle.

I jumped into his cart to ride shotgun to an off-limits part of the Center. This was a place where they put cats that had social problems (like killing their trainers, justifiable homicide if you ask me) or ones that just were not around people very much as they were growing up. Large pen after large pen – almost like a little oasis for each group of cats – showed well-fed, happy cats. There was a group of six tigers in one large area and when Joe got out of the cart and walked over to the side of the pen, they all came running to get their ears scratched. It was exactly the same as when my cats greet me at the door after work. He talked to them while they huffed their affection (a sign that they like you). At one point he called me over and said, “Go ahead and pet that one.” The Tiger was turned away from us so he didn’t know if it was Joe or me who was petting him…. but I did. Holy crap I was touching a tiger! As I stroked the coarse fur it was hard not to squeal with joy. This was too darned cool! I had only been there 10 minutes! I knew that most people who visited never get to do this. It was a privilege that I took serious while being deliriously happy.

After we checked the other pens we drove back to the main area where we had started. I hadn’t seen any of the cats here before and Joe gave me a map and told me where to go. While the Center is open to the public with a nominal $10 fee, no one was out there yet. So I clutched my camera and headed down one of the main paths. It was incredible. I couldn’t breathe because I was being stalked from pen to pen by kitty cats who looked at me like I was the lunch they brought in for the day… maybe just the mid-morning snack. They knew I was no challenge to them – just a blonde cookie that they could get to if they could just get around, or over, that fence. And they tried. One tiger charged the fence and ended up with his paws up a telephone pole used to hold the pens together. When he did that he was at least 10 feet tall, and my heart was in my throat. I called my brother. I called my boyfriend. I called my parents. Anyone to talk to while I walked around trying to get used to the situation, and incredibly enough, I did.

After seeing that the pen did indeed hold, even with a charge, I started playing with the cats. There is a pride of lions in one pen – one mack daddy male cat and his harem of 5 willing lionesses at his disposal – yes, it’s good to be the King. The path that walks around this area is right next to the human’s path and if you start at the top and run the entire length of the pen you know almost exactly what it feels like to be one of those gazelles you see in the Wild Kingdom videos. Lions can turn and stop on a dime and they aren’t even breathing heavy. Only thing missing was them grabbing at my legs to take me out and down for the kill, but you got the picture loud and clear.

All around there were ways to “play” with the cats and the more times you went around the sanctuary the more you learned about their styles. Some couldn’t care less if you were right in front of them, some just stared you down, and there was one tiger who was the “hide and seek” cat – a game I play with my cats at home in my kitchen. For 15 minutes I would go from one side of his pen to the other hiding behind his shelter. I would go one way and stop and he would look around the corner for me and I would go back the other direction and he would run back that way to look around the other corner… but he was a smart big cat, he finally realized if he jumped on top of the shelter I was hiding behind that he could always see me. We called a truce at that point.


Earlier I mentioned about Joe’s bloody shoes. This is perhaps the hardest part of going on this trip. 190+ large cats eat about 3,000 lbs of meat a day and these cats are fed 6 out of 7 days a week. Where do they get 18,000 lbs of meat a week? PetSmart would have a heart attack if you placed that order and it would also cost too much and you can’t let them hunt for it themselves… the neighbors are nervous enough. Luckily they have arrangements with local cattlemen who will give them any cows who have died as long as they come and pick them up. So they show up with a truck and haul the carcasses back to the butcher station, which is right as you come in the door of the Center. Ok, I do marketing, public relations and have done interior design during my lifetime... I have MANY suggestions for alternative locations for this bloody situation, but maybe there's a reason I don't know about.

Now, I had been warned about this. Dean had told me to practice shallow breathing because the stench would kill you. I figured with it being November maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Dean was usually there in the height of summer. Everything smells bad then. Well, I got there expecting the worst and was happy to find out – yes there was a butcher station – looking exactly like something you’d see in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre – blood soaking into sawdust… but no recently deceased critters in the area. Ah, maybe I would be spared.

Not quite. A couple of hours into my visit I was walking back up to main entrance to jump in my car and head to grab a quick lunch. That was until I caught a sickly sweet smell wafting my direction. “God Bless America, what’s that?” I said to myself continuing to walk. I was nearly at the front gate when I looked up and saw the cause. A new critter had been brought in and they were prepping it for lunch for the kids. So much for my lunch. I always said if I had to kill my own dinner that I would end up being a vegetarian and this proved it.

The good news was they had a group of gradeschool kids coming that afternoon and cleaned it up as best they could before they arrived. Can’t have little Johnnie or Susie having nightmares about Bessie the Cow on the milk containers being fed to the tigers. How do you make that one go away? Turning on the light won’t do it.

It turned out that the day I visited was a special event – the Pumpkin party for the cats. There had to be more then 200 people who came to watch. The staff takes a load of pumpkins, fills them with meat to give to the cats to play with. I have two 9-month old kittens named Sydney and Adelaide and I give them mylar crunchy balls to bat around and play with. What happens when you give a ¼ ton Tiger a pumpkin filled with chicken? The exact same thing. They played with it. Batted it around. Picked it up in their huge teeth and carried it around. One even jumped into its water bowl with it. It was hilarious.

To deliver the pumpkins, they take the cats in each pen and put them in a holding area while volunteers placed the pumpkins in the open field for them to find. Yes, just like parents hiding Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies for their kids. And the cats reacted like 4-year-olds running at top speed when they were released to the nearest pumpkin, and then the next to find what was in the next one. But don’t let the cuteness of this scenario fool you. The most chilling part of the day was watching four 400 lb tigers cross 200 yards in a blink - coming right at you. We wouldn't stand a chance on open ground with them. No “Scarface wanna-be” should fool themselves.

My brother has stories of sitting next to full-grown leopards at Joe’s house. In a lot of circumstances new cats live with him for a period of time to get acquainted, but he is the only person who should have them living in his house. He is a unique individual who may be equal parts feline and human but even then he never forgets the risk that these wild, beautiful cats hold just a paw swipe away. Healthy respect for their beauty is the biggest lesson anyone should learn at EFRC.

As I sit here scratching the ears of my own ferocious pussycats who are sitting on my lap as I type (and serving as my editors by trying to type on my keyboard with their own paws - everyone's a critic) I always remember my day with their bigger cousins. You can’t help but wonder about how much wild cat they still have in them. Every now and then I see clear evidence that they are my pint-sized Tigers in the sun.