Big Cat Rescue's Vision and Mission
VISION STATEMENT
A world where the animals we share it with are treated with respect and caring and where habitat is preserved to insure the indefinite future survival of these wonderful gifts of nature. In creating such a world, we hope the same principles of respect and caring will carry over to the way humans treat each other.
MISSION STATEMENT
To provide the best home we can for the animals in our care and
to reduce the number of cats that suffer the fate of abuse, abandonment
or extinction by teaching people about the plight of the cats, both in
the wild and in captivity, and how they can help through their behavior
and support of better laws to protect the cats.
If you agree with our mission statement you can help us fulfill it with your donation today:
Seeing the Rabbit
After a recent tour of Big Cat Rescue, Mark Price, the talk show host of the program called, “If Not You, Then Who?” shared a story about “seeing the rabbit”.
A dog saw a rabbit run by and took off chasing him; barking wildly in his enthusiasm. Other dogs heard all the excitement and joined in the chase. As the pack raced through town barking their enthusiasm, other dogs joined in the pursuit. The last dogs to join the chase were the first to drop out, then the second group gave up. Finally, the only dog left chasing the rabbit was the first dog…. because he was the only one who had actually seen the rabbit.
The moral of the story here is that if you expect people to stay in the program, you have to “show them the rabbit”. If you were at our last Volunteer Appreciation Meeting you may have caught a glimpse of “the rabbit”. Howard was giving our financial report and sharing how these numbers compared to last year's and explaining what these increased revenues will mean to the sanctuary in achieving its goal. Some good questions were raised by the volunteers about exactly what that goal is. Like most people, our own staff and volunteers immediately associate more money with the ability to rescue more cats, and that is true, but not in the sense that many people seem think.
We reminded everyone of our mission statement and have posted it in the Check Point and on the web site so that everyone knows the ultimate goal of Big Cat Rescue:
Care of our cats. The narrow mission of Big Cat Rescue is to provide the best permanent home we can for the cats in our care. We do this by building enclosures in a very natural habitat with foliage and shelter on our 45 acre site, by providing the best nutritional and medical care possible, and by having active operant conditioning and enrichment programs to provide for their physical and psychological well being.
Education. The broader mission of the sanctuary is to reduce the number of cats that suffer the fate of abandonment and/or abuse and to encourage preservation of habitat and wildlife. We urge people to behave in a way that will support these goals by teaching people about the plight of the cats, both in the wild and in captivity. We accomplish this through educational guided tours, educational programs for young people, and by maintaining a website that we believe is the world’s largest and best resource for information about exotic cats.
Due to limitations on space and resources we have been able to rescue about 6 animals each year. In 2003 we had to turn away 300 exotic cats and every year that number had been doubling. It was like standing under a waterfall of suffering and abuse and having to make heart wrenching decisions about who the handful of cats would be that we could save. The others haunt me incessantly.
Far too many sanctuaries give in to this short sighted approach for a lot of reasons. They can't say no. Every story is sad and every animal deserving and it is easy to tell yourself, that in the grand scheme of things, one more won't make that big a difference in your ability to care for the rest. One more always leads to one more, and just one more until one day the people who were trying to do a good thing are shut down for inadequate care and the animals shuffled off or euthanized.
Sometimes sanctuaries find that they can't get volunteers or donations unless there i
s a “rescue
of the month” to keep patrons excited and interested. While the money raised may be enough to do that particular rescue, it doesn't take into consideration the life long commitment to that animal nor to the others who were rescued the month or years before. The more dreadful the rescue the more money they can raise for the moment, so that often means rescuing many animals at one time. Those sorts of situations often arise from the cases of sanctuaries that have been down this ill thought out path and have found themselves with more animals than they could ever provide life time care for.
Even if we doubled the number of animals we rescued and did a cat-of-the-month that is still only 12 cats and we would still have to turn away ever increasing numbers of unwanted exotic cats. By 2004 we could expect, given the past 10 year trend, the number of unwanted exotic cats to be 600; in essence, turning away two cats a DAY.
Einstein's definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome. We had been doing things the way we always had and it wasn't working. The number of unwanted big cats was doubling every year. We had always put our cats first and provided them with the best care and attention. Our staff and volunteers are the best there is when it comes to making life for our cats the best it can be for life in a cage. Our donors give to us because they know the money really goes to the animals and not to a lot of administrative costs or salaries. But we couldn't save them all. We couldn't even make a tangible difference in the big picture if we continued to do things the way everyone always has.
In November of 2002 Mary Hessler Key a local author and business consultant brought together all of the local animal rescue groups and introduced the No More Homeless Pets concept that was originally started by Best Friends. The mission of No More Homeless Pets is to eliminate the euthanasia of healthy dogs and cats due to overpopulation. The success of the program nationally and with our local Hillsborough chapter relies largely on eliminating the cause of unwanted pets coming into the shelters through an aggressive spay and neuter program. This is coupled with a strong education program to help people learn to keep the pets they have and enabling them to see the benefit in spaying and neutering their pets.
At Big Cat Rescue we began to look at the source of so many unwanted big cats and determined that the main reasons for big cats needing sanctuary is that they never work out as pets and that they have a very short period of profitability for their owners. They must constantly be replaced with cubs to meet the demand the public has created through their ignorance of what that means to the animals. We decided that the only way to stop the flood of displaced exotic cats would be to educate the public and especially our lawmakers about what really happens to the big cats when they aren't cute little cubs any more.
In late 2003 the Captive Wild Animal Safety Act was passed as a Federal law that bans the interstate sale and transport of big cats as pets. In 2004 the number of unwanted cats that came to our attention in need of rescue dropped from 300 to 91. Based upon all other indicators, the unwanted big cats were expected to be in excess of 600 in 2004, but for the first time ever, that number dropped significantly to just 91. What a difference an intelligent law makes!
All of the cubs that would have been bred and sold and abandoned by the time they were a year old had dropped by two thirds in the first year since the passing of the new law. At a minimum last year, 200 big cats were NOT born for lives of confinement, deprivation and ultimately abandonment because there was a better law to keep them from being bred. We may not get to look into the eyes of those cats we helped save and pat ourselves on the back for having kept them from ever knowing a day of hunger or boredom. That kind of reward may not be as touchy-feely as standing before the chuffing appreciation of a rescued tiger, but we have to ask ourselves, “Why do we do this? Do we rescue cats because it makes us feel good or because we don't want them to suffer?”
If it is the latter, then we need to be as selfless and effective as humanly possible. 
We can rescue far more cats by educating the public about the choices they make in entertainment, clothing, sporting and their choice of pets. We can insure that those who are just too stupid to understand aren't allowed to make the wrong choices by enacting more protective laws. Achieving those goals means going outside of our comfort zone. It means using every opportunity to tell people on tours, online and in our personal circle of influence about what happens to last year's cubs. It means getting involved in politics and getting everyone we know involved as well. It means doing things for the animals that aren't about what makes us feel good, but rather are about what makes a difference to the countless exotic cats who are languishing in cages around the world.