. . . are the people who are fostering this felid.
And another view, this time with cub noises and a lion lagniappe:
I have failed miserably in my search to pet a baby tiger (a lion or other big felid will also do, so long as it’s a cub).
p.s. I realize that one shouldn’t raise wild felids in the home, and I have no idea about the circumstances behind these videos. So let’s not have any lecturing and just enjoy this beautiful animal.
h/t: Matt
Maybe I’m being cynical, but I’d wager that little white dog will, in the near future, become lunch.
Perhaps you can find a baby Polish tiger.
Maybe Hili has some connections…
So do tigers use litter boxes?
Tigers use the litter box anywhere they want to!
Soooooooo cute! And blue eyes. The couch is gonna be toast, though..
The size of those paws though, looks like it’s wearing big fuzzy mittens!
Something went weird with the posts but I did reply that there has to be someone out there that can make Jerry’s tiger dream come true given the readership esp. since he sadly filed this under, “I suck”.
I’d help if I had tiger access but I just have geek access. 🙂
If you ever go to Argentina, there’s a zoo there in which you can even pet full-grown tigers:
http://www.argentinaindependent.com/socialissues/urbanlife/lujan-zoo-petting-lions-and-tigers-and-bears/
… and JAC could indulge his love of soccer and watch the … sorry, I’ve forgotten the result of that competition again, though the wife did insist on watching it more-or-less live. I think I was reading WEIT (the website) in preference.
I know there is a place in South Africa where you could walk with lion cubs and pet them, but I don’t know if there is a similar place any closer to Chicago.
It’s a kitten!
…a kitten that already weighs twice as much as Baihu…but it’s a kitten!
Sorry…this seems to be incoherently obvious….
b&
A British friend named Hili (seriously) went to a park in India I believe it was, where Buddhist monks raise orphaned tigers. One may walk amongst them and cuddle
(the cats that is).
What, no cuddling the Buddhists?
This was in India, not Burma.
I’ve never been to India. Are women allowed to touch the monks there and is cow-cuddling frowned upon or do they encourage it?
[Buddhist monks] as dodgy as walking through the seminary petting the trainee priests. Wear a chastity belt! An A-level chastity belt (you’ve now got me wondering what the BDSM people call such a device ; I do not doubt it’s existence).
I was right not to doubt the existence. What surprised me (though in hindsight, why am I surprised?) is the design of chastity devices intended for “discrete wear at the office, meetings etc.” Seminary too, I’m sure. Didn’t the albino monk in ‘The da Vinci Code” do his business while wearing bondage gear?
He had a somewhat ill-designed garter equipped during his shenanigans and added a bit of whipping for leisure purposes.
Self mutilation can be a nasty bit of human psychology, but some seem to get a kick out of it.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but for the love of god people, remember your bloody safewords!
One of the bondage sites I looked at was producing a quite stylish line of stainless steel combination padlocks. Proof against “contamination.” And you can have the key tattooed where you can’t read it, for added titillation. Branded. the key, not the padlock – even if that are made by a reputable locksmith, I doubt they have a maker’s mark.
Serial numbers could come in handy in, though.
I can just imagine how that conversation on the “Customer Service Line” is going to go.
– Customer is asked to read serial number.
– “But I’m wearing the belt”
– Cust.Serv. : “Well, you’ll need to shove your head up your donkey then!”
– “[muffled grunts and struggles] [reads out serial number]”
– Cust.Serv. : “OK, I’ll get a new key in the post to you. Priority delivery will be with you in 24 hours.”
– “[muffled grunts and struggles]”
– Cust.Serv. : “And you have a nice day too!”
It has the makings of a timeless comedy classic.
LOL.
It’s got Python written all over it. Well done! 😀
Is there a font – for writing sarcastic responses in? – called “Python”?
Haven’t found one so far, but have found a call for left-leaning fonts to be available for use as a sarcasm indicator.
OTOH, one person thinks that tYpInG iN HiMaLaYa CaSe LiKe ThIs could be a sarcasm indicator (the capitalisation of “Himalaya” introduces one problem).
I dunno about the sarcasm font. It seems crude and somehow self-defeating considering the nature of the subject.
It’s a bit like making air-quotes with your fingers while talking. Excessive and distracting.
Sarcasm and the web is a match made in heaven and I can only daydream about the countless material the Python’s would’ve gotten from it had it been around when they started out.
Some trolls are masters of the art, but alas it is a fine line.
I think the crudity and self-defeatingness of the “sarcasm font” is part of the point.
On the subject of sarcasm, I just saw news that Jeremy Kyle (one of the depths to which UK TV has sunk) has been pepper-sprayed while doing something in Magaluf. I wonder if he got a DNA test on the sprayer?
That went above my head, so point well taken. 🙂
Speaking of Python, there’s a live production of something like Monty Python Live – Almost – going to be shown in movie theaters on the 20th and possibly repeated the 23 rd and 27th in theaters worldwide ( but not, alas, in Moab and Whistler, where we will be with dog). Check it out:-)
Already set the PVR, so I’ll be able to FF through the adverts.
@marsroverdriver (byline on twitter : “there’s a robot on Mars ; I tell it what to do ; it does it.” Coolest job description. Ever.) saw the live show and was metaphorically pissing his pants over it. High praise, indeed.
I’m afraid my chastity accessories funds have run dry this month.
I’ll have to make it a quick drive-by monk cuddle. And I’ll dress as a woman…..oh, the horror!
You sound so Scandinavian! [GRIN]
What, dressing up as a woman?
You guys win the weirdest thread award! LOL!!!
That sounds like a challenge. I’m going to have to Rule-38 winkle pickers now, to upset Ben.
Why not? It’s not that there’s a shortage of lecturing on this site (of the interesting kind, so I’m not complaining).
Let’s have a lecturing about keeping endangered animals in one’s home because they’re soooo cute while they are small (relatively speaking). Or shouldn’t we also have a lecturing about elephant poaching and just enjoy a beautiful ivory statuette, because we don’t know about the circumstances behind it? Just curious …
I’m not obtuse to your point, but slaughtering an elephant for ivory doesn’t equate to fostering a juvenile animal in a home setting. There exist legitimate reasons to foster a juvenile animal, the only reason to kill an elephant for it’s ivory is because there are enough people who think that ivory makes a pretty decoration to support a black market for it in China. Your comment makes a valid point, but Ivory poaching is so terribly wasteful and disrespectful of nature that I feel it stands alone as the absolute summit of animal cruelty. The practice is a vestigial representative of an arrogant, and nominally religious, worldview in which humanity posits itself as superior and somehow removed from the natural world and nature exists only to placate the whims of human beings.
Agreed! I also agree that we can’t really judge the video clip as we don’t know anything about its context which might (or might not) be perfectly legitimate. I just felt sort of intrigued by that particular chain of thought – we don’t know the context, so let’s just admire the cuteness – which felt rather unlike everything else that I read on WEIT. But of course, I have been reading this website long enough to know that my analogy was pointed but not likely at all.
Rhino horns, too, and those horrible people who make ashtrays out of gorilla paws:-(
I thought America had everything 🙂 I’ll see what my mate Garnet knows, we’re not all daft in Canada and a heck of a lot closer to Chicago! Jerry wants to pet a tiger, that’s a lot easier than Polish.
The trick, I think, is entirely in the ethics.
I believe there are a number of places in the US where you can pet tigers, and probably cubs too, but I think (?) Jerry is set upon petting them only in what he considers an ethical situation, which limits things quite a lot. Otherwise I think it’s fairly easy, as life ambitions go.
I’ve held a baby lion myself about 15 (?) years ago at a small pet store in Houston, TX, for example. It was there just as a promotion for the store: have your picture taken with the baby lion. I probably have the photo in storage somewhere. I normally bought fish there and it was just chance that I came in on the day they were having the promotion. They had a baby lion and a slightly older lion. You got to hold the baby in your lap, and the larger one, about the size of a german shepherd ,would in a separate picture put it’s paws on your lap. The thing you notice most about them is the paws… big big paws. It didn’t occur to me at the time to wonder where they came from or to consider the ethics of their situation. It only occurred to me as I left the store with fish and photo to wonder about my safety, as the larger of the two could have easily sent me to the hospital had it taken the kind of swipe at me that many cats have (did it have claws? I don’t know… it was a zero information encounter on my part). Anyway, if a nondescript pet store in Houston could conjure up a baby lion as an advertising stunt, I assume that they are not that uncommon in the US, just that these situations don’t meet ethical muster.
I’m English of a certain age and what you describe is utterly gross, we wouldn’t even consider it. Close to where I grew up is Woburn Abbey, where the Duke of Bedford created what is now called Woburn Safari Park. Wiki says it first opened in 1970, I recall the Duke being known for his conservation of animals in the sixties. My mate is Canadian, a zoologist and probably knows of similar facilities in N. America. I’m not a PETA type person at all so my strong reaction surprised me, Texas says it all though 🙂
Huh? Jerry wants to polish a tiger cub?
Oh, ICWYM.
I was trying hard not to take the mickey out of Polish. The English have huge respect for Poles and therefore abuse them just like we do each other LOL.
There are places which rescue wild animals where you can help raise young tigers. Also baboons, owls, rhinoceroses, etc.
That pathetic excuse for a “dog” would’ve been “lunch” in that video if the poor cat hadn’t been de-clawed.
The bracketed parts of the captions look very Portuguese to me. So, unless this is something like a zoo-keeper’s house in Portugal, I’d hazard a guess at Brazil?
There was a programme series on the Beeb a couple of weeks ago where a NZ zoo keeper had to hand-rear a couple of cubs of [a tiger species I’ve forgotten]. I forget if this was because they’d been rejected by their dam, or if they were part of a captive-breeding effort (whence, take away the litter and the dam will come back into season sooner than otherwise). In either case, that wouldn’t cause me any ethical qualms if I wanted a cuddle session.
Indeed it is Portuguese. Based on their accent, it is in Brazil for sure. But I guarantee tigers are not common pets in Brazil!
Looked like Portuguese to me, too. Could it be Angola or Mozambique( but then they wouldn’t really be any more likely to have tigers than Portugal or Brazil…) Hey, maybe Goa??
Oh, Goa. I’ve a colleague who lives in Goa.
no I don’t – he was asking me for a reference recently, so I guess he’s moving on to another job.
There’s an animal rescue centre I donate to that is more or less specialized in taking on cases of abandoned baby tigers and lions. They let donors meet (and play) with the animals if they feel you have the right temperament. Not sure you’d come all the way to Southern Spain for it, but at the moment they have a 5 month old lion: http://www.zoodecastellar.es/english/
P.S. if anyone’s in southern spain, it’s definitely worth a visit. This project is a private initiative and depends primordially on what they take in from ticket sales and donations. They also do workshops for children regarding biology/animal life etc.
You may want to check out this safari park in Bandon, Oregon to see if it’s worth a visit (not in Chicago, but it is in the States, and at first perusal seems like a decent place):
http://www.westcoastgameparksafari.com/
We found that neck of the woods lovely in its own right when we live there for a few years.
Do not go there, they treat their animals poorly. I went there once and it was an awful experience. If you’re going to go to a zoo in Oregon, Wildlife Safari (http://www.wildlifesafari.net/) or the Oregon Zoo in Portland (http://www.oregonzoo.org/) are much better.
In recently going through pictures from our childhood, my little sister found a photo of all three of us kids with a lion cub (she said “look, it’s us with a tiger!”, but it was definitely a lion). Though I’m the eldest I had completely forgotten about our posing with a lion, so seeing the photo was a surreal experience.
In Livingston, Zambia, last month, we visited a rehab place where we petted and walked with lion and cheetah cubs (up to about 3 1/2 years). I have a fun shot of my hand being liked by a cheetah that was big enough to easily dispatch me if it had so wanted. (Sorry, no tigers in Africa.) And it’s not that far from various places where you can take game viewing trips to see them in the wild.
Although not indigenous to Africa, there actually are some tigers in South Africa:
http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-tiger-canyons-philippolis
I’ve seen on TV about a place in Africa with tigers. Also, saw on TV about handraising clouded leopard cubs. I got the impression that this had been going on for several generations, and that the cats were on the way to domestication. That was my impression, not specifically said in the program.
If I were a biology professor living in Chicago, I doubt I would have any problem finding a big cat cub to cuddle.
I’d like to see if a tiger would respond to a good ear and neck scratching with the same expression of feline Ecstasy my cats do–I bet they would. Trying a belly scratch might be a little too dangerous
Not to forget cheeks! I love the way Freddie kind of pooches out his lips all square when he gets a good hard side- face
rub.