2015-02-23 Carole Baskin‘s Diary

Carole Baskins Diary

Reno the Leopard Dies

We probably can’t use a lot of this, until after Bengali dies, so that the circus doesn’t take him out of spite, but here is the background on Reno, so you know it for his tribute. Maybe you can find a nicer way to say some of this.

I was lying to him and he knew it. I was saying, “It’s going to be alright, but my voice faltered.” He couldn’t see me, so his other senses were heightened. This was going to be a long trip and if he didn’t stop pacing around in circles, he was going to be bruised and bloodied from hitting the sides of the cage. I asked him to think of a time when he was happiest.

He instantly thought back to that day in March of 1995 when all was good in his world. He was suckling at his mother’s breast; kneading the warm milk from her with his tiny, freckled paws. His mother lovingly groomed his golden fur and tiny black spots with a big, raspy tongue. She was assuring him then, as I was telling him now, that we would protect him, but we both failed. We had both been conned.

Within just a few short days of giving birth, his mother had to step outside the den to drink and eat so that she could sustain her little cub. As soon as she did, the door slammed shut, locking her out and sealing her cub’s fate. He would be bottle raised, by some well meaning, but ignorant young girl, who would be told that he had to be taken from his mother, because she had abandoned him. Instead of the leopard milk nature had intended him to thrive upon, he’d be fed goat’s milk, reconstituted from powder, because it’s cheaper, and he’d be deprived, even this poor substitute, so that he could be used as a photo prop.

As a growing cub, his ancient instincts were telling him he should bite and use his claws. He should practice his stalking, pouncing and play killing because very soon he would be relying on those skills. Instead, he was smacked, kicked and his lips pinched hard against his sharp little milk teeth, to try any break him. His bottle would be with held until there was a paying customer, and they would use it to keep him quiet long enough to get their photo, and be on their way. Now they had a trophy to show others what a great bond they have with wildlife.

When he outgrew this lucrative stage in his life, where people would pay by the minute to fondle him, he was sold to the circus. His betrayal meant that for the next 7 years he would perform on command…or else.

I met Reno on New Year’s Day in 2002. The circus trainer who “worked” the leopard was tearfully saying good-bye to him, after Reno had bounded from his barren beast wagon, into the lushly landscaped, lakeside enclosure at our sanctuary. I was told that Reno had been trained to ride in a chariot, pulled by horses, and that his act had been canceled, so he was no longer needed. I heard someone say how sad it was that this trainer loved Reno so much, and now had to give him up. I snorted silently to myself thinking, “Those crocodile tears had nothing to do with love for this leopard. Those were tears of guilt.”

“Guilt for the years of cracking a whip down across Reno’s beautiful face for even thinking about pouncing on those prancing tails of the horses in front of him. Guilt for keeping this magnificent, intelligent animal in a barred circus wagon for the past 7 years. Guilt for taking the crowd’s applause and taking pleasure in being thought to be a big cat whisperer, when he knew that the positive reinforcement, that he claimed to be the key to his success, was just the smoke and mirrors used to hide the fact that beatings and deprivation were what really kept Reno under control. And the worst guilt of all, was in knowing that the cats grow up, and when they do, they won’t tolerate circus life any more, so you have to dump them somewhere and start the abuse all over again on some innocent little cub.”

In the year 2000 I’d been working on a contract with the circus for over two years, to try and get the last 19 tigers and this one leopard, off the road and into permanent sanctuary. Back then a tiger costed us $7,500 a year, just in direct costs, (now it’s 10k a year) and we had never had a year where we had been able to break even, so there was no way we could take on the burden of $150,000 a year. The deal we struck was that the circus would pay for a cage and food for their cats to come here, and if their cats needed a vet, they would send the circus vet. In return, I would not use their name when I rail against circus acts that use big cats. They said they were getting out of the tiger business, and I was happy to provide a loving home for their last remaining cats.

I had no money for a lawyer, and the circus had teams of them. The contract was not the iron clad agreement I thought it was, when it came to their vow to “get out of the tiger business.” In fact, that line somehow never even made it into the final draft. While they did stop breeding and buying tigers, they skirted the intent of our agreement by hiring acts that owned their own big cats. To their credit, they did try a year with no tigers, but the public, ignorant, or uncaring of the inherent abuse in circus life, insisted that wild animals perform for their amusement. This was frustrating, but not nearly as gut wrenching as having to deal with the circus vets.

Circus vet don’t last long. In the past 15 years, I’ve lost count of how many we have had to deal with. My feeling is that these are vets who couldn’t run their own practice, who have sold out to the blood money of the circus. They provide a sense of legitimacy to the circus that would be totally lacking otherwise. But, it turns out, I had too. While I was restrained from using the circus’ name, for fear of them coming to take their cats back, they used the sanctuary’s good name in their spin literature. The circus used us to assure the public that they could be guilt free in bringing their kids to see wild animals being forced to perform, because in the end there would be our wonderful sanctuary awaiting the retirees. Any vet, with just a smattering of self respect, can’t abide by being used this way for long.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that their vets knew a whole lot less than ours did about cats, and I would much rather have been able to rely upon our own vets, but my contract required that the circus cats had to see the circus vets. I don’t know exactly what the connection is, but the circus vets all seem to work out of the University of Florida in Gainesville. Despite the fact that everything necessary to diagnose and treat a big cat is right here, they would always insist that any of the ailing circus cats at Big Cat Rescue be loaded up into trucks and shipped, in the middle of the night, by circus carnies to the University. The circus vet would then make a big parade of having a cool animal to work on. Students would oooh and aaah over the rare cat and the seemingly, all knowing circus vet who would hold court.

After the first lion I had ever taken to this facility, back in the 90’s had been kept sedated for over 5 hours, and used as a teaching tool, I had loathed the prospect of ever having to come there again. His name was Mufasa, and he had died from the ordeal. Now, every time a circus cat had to be taken in for diagnostics, I groaned inside, knowing the fate that awaited them. What made it so much worse now though, was that we have all of the tools necessary right here on the sanctuary grounds, but the circus vets can’t pretend to know it all here, and would never be allowed to keep a cat sedated for so long, while they lectured and pontificated over the ailing cat. I understand the necessity of hands on learning, and our vets are good about teaching our volunteers during procedures here, but none of us would risk a cat’s life by adding on time under sedation to do that.

For the past 15 years our keepers and our vets have made sure Reno had the very best of care, but now he was acting as if he couldn’t see. Just last week he was bounding around his grassy enclosure and got all excited at the sight of a blood ‘cicle coming his way, so this blindness was sudden. He began sleeping a lot more than usual, and vomited what little food he was eating. We would happily have diagnosed and treated him here, but were not allowed because the contract required he be seen by a circus vet instead. How I wanted to ignore the contract, but doing so might result in the last two cats, still living from the original 20, being sent back to living in circus wagons. That’s how I had found them living back in the 90’s; tiny circus wagons, pulled into a circle, with no shade and nothing for the cats to do but lay on a hard, wooden floor all day and peer out from behind the bars of their beast wagons.

Within five minutes of meeting the man in charge of the elephants and tigers who were all tucked out of sight, in the small town of Williston, FL, he proclaimed how much he hated tigers. It was clear, from the way they were being kept that he was telling the truth. USDA had cited the circus for years, and these cats who wouldn’t perform any longer were just a liability. Years later this circus we be hit with the largest fine ever leveled by USDA against a wild animal exhibitor, and that was just for the abuses that were so obvious they couldn’t be overlooked.

When Reno arrived in Tampa, his tail looked like 40 miles of bad road and was raw and oozing at the tip. The handler told me that tigers had bitten his tail too many times and the vets had sewed it back on, but each time it created a kink to one side or the other where tissue had been missing. Circus acts are on the road for most of the year and the wagons are chained, side by side, in dark, smelly trailers and train cars. If a cat isn’t always on guard, his neighbor can reach out a paw and pull the long tail into his mouth in an instant. All of the cats in the circus were tigers, except Reno and he took the brunt of the abuse from his fellow performers who were 3 times his size.

Reno’s years at Big Cat Rescue have been full of trees to climb, hills to survey his territory from, keepers who adored him, enrichment to shred and operant conditioning to keep his mind stimulated. Unlike punishment training, operant conditioning here consists of rewards for doing the things we need, like leaning up against the fence for annual vaccinations. Because it is only reward based, the cats know they can choose to participate, or walk away. Given that choice, they often make us plan vaccines for another day, when they are in the mood. That kind of training won’t work if, “the show must go on.”

Apparently, the circus couldn’t find anyone to drive Reno to Gainesville, so I agreed to do it myself. As much as I hated what surely awaited him there, he definitely needed diagnostics done if we were going to save his life. As expected, they kept him sedated for more than 7 hours, from what I could tell of cryptic messages relayed from the University vet to our vet, to me. What was even more maddening was that the circus vet wasn’t there, and apparently had no intention of being there, despite insisting that we come to her. She just instructed the young vet, who spoke French, but little English, by phone. She could have done that with our vets and saved Reno this long trip.

They wouldn’t allow me to stay with Reno. They never allow me to see what they do to the circus cats. It wouldn’t be good for the outside world to know what really goes on behind closed doors. I waited in the van all day, until they finally notified me that it wasn’t cancer, but they wanted to keep him (on display, no doubt) at the clinic, for his follow up treatment. The vet said his liver was riddled with ulcers and that the MRI, CT Scan, X-rays and Sonogram did not give them any reason for his sudden blindness; but he was completely blind.

We can accommodate blind cats. 29 of our cats are over the age of 20 and blindness just comes with old age, but i asked if they could reverse the damage to his liver. The vet said it might be treatable, but not reversible. She said they would culture the liver biopsy and treat him, as if it were hepatitis, until they got the culture back. That could be several days, especially since this was a week end. I would much rather have taken him back to the sanctuary, where he would be surrounded by those who know and love him for this supportive care, but was reminded that he isn’t my cat and the circus is in control of what happens to him.

In all the years of caring for Reno, I never once saw him do it, but his tail bore the evidence, that in his solitary moments, Reno dreamed of his mother. He remembered how it felt to be safely snuggled up against her. He suckles on his own tail, sometimes until it bleeds, in order to hold firm that memory of what it was like to feel safe and loved. No matter how much we tried to provide distraction to Reno from the fact that he was born in a cage, would always live in a cage and would die in a cage, he always knew that he was born a leopard and that his life should have been his own. Two days later, Monday Feb 23 at 11:36 am, Dr. G (the circus vet) told Dr. Wynn that Reno wasn’t doing any better and felt he should be euthanized.

Meanwhile I had emailed Tom on Feb 22 asking, “Dear Thomas, Who do I need to talk to at x about having Reno Leopard (age 20) and Bengali Tiger (age 20+) donated to us and x released from their ongoing care? These cats are way too old to keep hauling them back and forth on a 5 hour, round trip, to Gainesville for diagnostics, when we have two big cats vets and all of that equipment here on site, or very close by. For the cats, Carole Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue “

He responded on the 23rd: “Carole: We are not interested in donating these animals and prefer to keep the boarding agreement in place. However, we would have no objections to you providing such vet care on site or nearby if and when your veterinarians believe that is appropriate. We would request that your veterinarians keep us apprised of any activities in that regard. Please have Dr. Wynn contact Dr. G to discuss the details. Tom x”

Hi, I’m Carole Baskin and I’ve been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/

I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story. My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.

You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile!

Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile

You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org

Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue

Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only and is my opinion.