To celebrate Maddy's birthday this year she wanted to do the "Keeper Tour" at her favorite place in the whole world, Big Cat Rescue (
http://www.bigcatrescue.org/), and her BFFFLs (Best Friends Forever For Life:)) came over for a disco sleepover party in the evening. It was a very, very long night and I think we all feel older this morning...
When we arrived at Big Cat Rescue in the afternoon they presented her with her special birthday gift - a brick with her name on it for their permanent path through the sanctuary. She was thrilled!
The Keeper Tour is two hours long and you get to see 'behind the scenes' all of the creative ways that the sanctuary enriches the lives of their cats. The vast majority of big cats end up at BCR after being abandoned by: private owners (who didn't realize how expensive and difficult they would become as pets), circus's, fur farms or were recovered from drug raids. For the most part the cats have been declawed and/or defanged and have never lived outside of captivity. These cats cannot be rehabilitated into their natural environment and therefore have to live out their days at the sanctuary.
To prevent boredom and to improve their quality of life, a lot of the enrichment activities involve stimulating their sense of smell. Here's Maddy doing the first activity on the tour which was making 'scent bags' from herbs, spices and even perfume for the cats to eat or play with.
We made frozen "bloodsicles" out of salmon broth, rats and baby chicks...
Maddy was a special helper and did a fine job of carrying the treat bucket...
Cats love new and interesting smells. Here's Armani the leopard who has given up his food for a minute to play with a bag we sprayed with Chanel!
Here's an ocelot growling to defend her food treat. It's a frozen rat - we didn't want it anyway :)
Since the staff do not interact with the cats at all, they train them some very basic commands so that they can inspect their bodies for any signs that they may require medical intervention. All training is done with positive reinforcement only and using a clicker and food treats. Evidently, big cats are very difficult to train in general and so many are destroyed (or abused) by the entertainment industry since they won't follow commands. Here's Bengali, a 500lb tiger doing the 'up' command...
And one of the cougars...
During the tour, we fed Fig Newtons to Banjo the bintarong or "bear cat." He's not really a cat at all and smells exactly like popcorn. He's very tame but check out those claws :)
Nikita is their biggest lioness. She was found chained to a wall and living on a concrete floor during a drug raid. She has to live alone since she had been declawed by her previous owner and so cannot survive in a pride. She is so beautiful...
This is a Sand Cat, a desert cat native to Afghanistan. The tour guide told us that they have to be really vicious to compensate for their small size. She said she was more afraid of this cat than the tigers! We thought he looked exactly like Puss in Boots from Shrek :)
Here's one of the caracals enjoying her hammock - another form of enrichment...
The tour was fantastic - Maddy's favorite visit so far (she's been 13 times now:))
While we were at BCR, Michael got the house all ready for the party...
Our girls arrived and we had pizza, cake and opened gifts...
Mike came up with a creative solution for how to hang the pinata...
The birthday girl got first dibs at the candy...
Tough times call for tough measures...
After the sugar rush, the girls got their dance on...
Mike was absolutely loving it :)
After flashlight tag, the girls went to bed and were still giggling well into the early hours. In the morning, we were all exhausted. Not too tired for Mr. Mike's famous pancakes though and Maddy still had the energy to make hers into a tiger...:)
Happy Birthday to our kind, sweet and beautiful girl, Madison. You have no idea how proud we are that you wanted to give to your favorite charity for your birthday. You are as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside - how lucky we are:)
***Update!!!***
Madison has also been blogging about her special day on her very own Big Cat Blog (www.mybigcatblog.blogspot.com). Today she received a comment on her blog from the actual CEO and Founder of Big Cat Rescue!!!It said
"Thanks so much for visiting the cats 13 times and for donating in such a kind way. This pictorial of your Keeper Tour is better than our own website at showing what it is like. Thanks for sharing. Carole Baskin, CEO Big Cat Rescue" How exciting!!!
