iamthelionking

You would not believe how often I hear this.

Although pacing in itself is not a sure sign of anything, it's usually an indication that the animal is experiencing some level of stress. This could happen for a variety of reasons -- adjusting to a new home is certainly one of them. We're lucky to have the resources to make sure our cats are well-adjusted. We observe little-to-no stress in our animals, and when problems do occur, it's usually because of an asshole human. Those situations are easy to resolve, and it involves removing the human.

No. We have a very strict protocol when dealing with the animals. I've been nibbled a bit too hard by cubs, but I've never been seriously injured by a big cat.

There are lots of suggestions for enrichment, but at ultimately the keeper decides what they want to do for the animal that day. The enrichment is often influenced by the animals' personalities, so the keeper usually has the best idea of what will make things interesting. For example, one of our Amur tigers is especially scent-oriented, so occasionally I'll hide some strongly scented treats throughout the exhibit for her to find.

We train them to voluntarily take injections. Before, the veterinarian would often have to dart the cats to tranquilize them and then give the injections. This was unreasonably stressful for the animals (for obvious reasons). In fact, the cats would recognize our veterinarians and start freaking out, because they knew someone was going to get darted or something otherwise discomforting was about to happen. For a while we resorted to disguising the vets (making them where masks so that the cats didn't recognize them).

Now, though, we use two keepers to administer treatments. The primary keeper will call the cat over and indicate that she's about to get a treat. The cat understands and offers her hip or tail to the secondary keeper in exchange for the treat. This is also how we sedate them should they need to go to the vet (eg for xrays or operations).

I'll be back for your other questions.

The cubs are always adorable. I've played with amur and snow leopard cubs, as well as the three tiger cubs we used to have. They are soft, curious, and playful -- the three main criteria of being cute, in my opinion. They get big fast though.