Hello everybody, it's Brittany at Big Cat
Rescue in Tampa, Florida,
here with another home tour for you.
Today I'm going to show you
Running Bear bobcat. You can see by
his name plate here, that he is quite an
elderly bobcat.
But we try to give them as much space as
we possibly can. Here it's never going to
be enough for
wild cats trapped in captivity, but we
certainly try our best. So this
is what we'll do. We will walk his
entire enclosure
and I'll just point out all of his
little amenities. We'll start right
here at this first feeding lockout. This
is the feeding lockout that he actually
does eat in
every morning. So we have a ceramic plate
that helps shade the water so that we
don't have like really, really hot water
for the cats
and it keeps debris and things like that
from coming out. With his older age, we
have placed the water on the ground.
Most of the cats have it elevated so
that they don't play in it or pee in it.
He has a feeding plate right there, so
a concrete slab that we're able to scrub
and sanitize every day.
Guillotine door, so if we ever need to
put him into lockout like we actually
recently did
for a dental issue, we can easily put him
in there and it
works out well. It's less stress for
everybody.
He has this raised den here. It's super
helpful
here in Florida because we do have a
storm season every year.
It's a nice dry space he can get away
from the rain
and it can keep him elevated.
He also has a coolaroo bed. I think he
spends more time rubbing on the sides of
it, than he does laying on it, but
he does have some natural foliage in
there. So he does have
real trees growing, lots of ferns.
I'm just going to walk all the way
around,
trying to show you different angles. He
loves to hide behind this den
and pop out at you.
And there he is under his platform!
So again just different kinds of plants
and trees growing. Looks like he got
himself an enrichment tube. Hi,
mister, is it okay if I show them your
home?
Yeah, this is Running Bear bobcat right
here.
Cutest old man! Right, so he loves it
under his platform nice and shady, but he
does have
two levels that he can get up on there.
This is another separating guillotine
door between his two bubbles. So
each bubble is designed to be about
twelve to eighteen hundred square feet
each.
And you can see the curved walls. The
biggest reason for that
is airflow, so when we get really high
winds during hurricane season,
the wind can just whip right through
this metal
and instead of it being like a you know
wooden fence or
something with a hard side that
it can't pass through easily it's more
likely to have something fall over,
these cages are designed that if
something were to fall on them,
they actually crumple inward and kind of
create a blockage instead of just
blowing wide open. So another little den
here.
He's got this nice cute little ball. Over
here is yet another feeding lockout and
another water bowl.
Back here he has this really cute
concrete den.
He spends a lot of time in there. I've
seen him on top of it as well,
so another nice shelter for him if he
ever needs it.
And it has an opening on both sides, so
when they get
much older like this and we really have
to look for them,
we want to be able to see in there from
every angle.
So we're able to see from both sides on
his den.
More grasses for him to play in or chew
on.
This is another view of his
water. It's a water lockout really, again
with his old age
and any kind of kidney issues, so he's
actually got two bowls of water over
here.
This is his safety entrance, so if we
ever need to go in,
we can close that separating guillotine
door I pointed out to you,
close him on one side or the other
depending on what we need,
go in through this double door system
and then take care of whatever needs
taken care of.
You can see that we have actually put
some bristle brushes on either side of
his platform,
hoping that he will rub up against them
to
help prevent him getting any type of
matting because he's such a fierce
little guy he will not allow anyone to
use our
metal retractable scratchers. So he's
showing you his lockout. He was just in
here getting a drink of water.
Hi mister, thanks for letting us see your
house.
Where are you gonna go?
You gonna hide behind your den so you
can jump out.
He's like, I don't know, I'm just gonna do
bobcat things.
Just gonna do bobcat things. So you can
see
we are right back where we started. His
very first lockout here.
I think he's gonna get cozy right back
where he was.
Thanks for letting us hang out, Bear Bear.
Well thank you, guys, so much for watching
these home tours and learning a little
bit about how we try to take care of
some of
our extremely elderly cats here. We are
basically a retirement home for cats,
many of them are 15 to 20 years or older.
Yeah, I say no, still fierce little
spirits though,
so if you have any other questions about
our enclosures, just go to
bigcatrescue.org/
cages and if you ever want to learn
about
each individual cat that calls Big Cat
Rescue home,
you can go to bigcatrescue.org/
catbio. Thank you, guys.-EDITED-DAL-DQ