Hey everybody, it's Brittany at Big Cat
Rescue in Tampa, Florida and I'm here
with Ares cougar.
He's a 14 year old male cougar. Can you
hear him purring?
Cougars are the largest cat that can
still purr like that. Everything larger
than a cougar, they roar or make a sawing
noise.
He's amazing. Ares lives here at Big Cat
Rescue in Tampa, Florida with his brother
and sister. He's got a brother named
Orion and a sister named Artemis. I hate
to even talk to you guys about him with
him sounding that amazing. But we're here
to educate. So these three cougar
siblings were orphaned as very tiny cubs
when a hunter shot and killed their
mother in Idaho. Idaho did not have a
rehab and release law making it legal to
do so. So they were either gonna end up
in the zoo world, where they probably
would have been separated, bred, drug
around, used for ambassador animals and
all that kind of stuff. Or luckily for
them they got to come live at a
sanctuary. All three of them still live
together today. They just celebrated
their 14th birthday in October.
So cougars are called all different
kinds of things depending on where in
the world you find them. It can be called
mountain lions,
pumas, here in Florida they're the
Florida panther and they're very, very
much endangered here. Being very patient
with us. Yes oh my word. It's about 80
some degrees here in Tampa, Florida so
it's quite warm.
He weighs around 142 pounds. So we are an
accredited sanctuary. We're located on 67
acres with about 60 permanent residents.
Ares, Orion and Artemis are our only
cougars. Love its tail. Thank you, Deb that
is correct, we are an accredited
sanctuary by the Global Federation of
Animal Sanctuaries. If you guys don't
follow them here on Instagram you should.
But they hold us to a high standard. We
don't do any buying, selling, trading
breeding or touching any of the cats
here. We are their forever home.
Where are the siblings?
I'm gonna guess in dens. Ares is the most
social out of the 3.
Let sleeping cougars lie. Enjoy your nap,
buddy. We'll take a real quick glance and
see if we see either of the other 2.
Orion or Artemis. I spotted one. This is
baby girl over here. They have a very
large enclosure and we're able to
separate them anytime that we need to
for feeding. Hi.
Feeding and enrichment. Hi lady. This is
Artemis.
So again we're an accredited sanctuary.
We don't do any touching here. We don't
go inside the enclosures with them
either. We find that to be really
dangerous and disrespectful to the cats.
They'd never allow you to walk up to
them and touch them and hold them and
pet them in the wild. So trapping them in
cages here seems very cruel. And it's
dangerous because they, even if they've
been raised in captivity their whole
lives, just like these guys unfortunately.
They still have that instinct to
bite and attack. If they hurt you, they
could be put down for that. So the risk
is never worth the reward. If you're
following anyone here on Instagram or
Facebook that shows the interaction with
wild animals like that. Those aren't
reputable places. We do not agree with
that. It's unfair to them to put them in
that kind of position. Look at those
teeth. She just showed you. One love bite
that would be the end.
But thank you all for following us. If
you have any questions you can always
direct message us or quite a few of our
regulars are in the comments answering
questions for you guys. We do much longer
Facebook "Lives" so you can always find
Big Cat Rescue on Facebook and we have a
YouTube channel of all of those
Walkabouts. If you go to dailybigcat.com
We're gonna see another cougar flop here
in a minute.
If you feel like donating to the cats
you can do that in several different
ways. But you can go to bigcatrescue.biz.
That's our main online store. You
can donate for their fundraisers, you
can buy any of the products there, you
can also sponsor the cats there. You can
also go to our official website
bigcatrescue.org/donate. OK Arty. See if
we could come across to Orion. Not seeing
him, we'll walk back over to Ares real
quick.
Oh, actually I do see him but he's on the
opposite side of where I am. So we'll say
a quick goodbye to Ares. So thank you
guys for joining us. This will post on
our stories for the next 24 hours.
Isn't he picture perfect?
All right everybody, well thank you for
joining us. Have a great day.
We're gonna let Ares get back to his
cat nap. EDITED-JR-DAL-MGN-DQ