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[Diablos]

http://www.wildaboutcats.org/require.htm

Training and Safety. The most important information you will need is on handling and training. This comes from experience. No matter how tame your cat, he can kill you if you do the wrong thing. Your behavior is very important to safety. Raising, handling, and training a young cat properly will make or break your ability to handle them after the first year. And even then there's no guarantee that they will be handlable upon maturity. Check yourself to be sure that walking and petting your cat is not the reason that you are getting one. Handling them for one year as a younster is not worth having to house and feed them and not being able to touch them for the next twenty years. Yet this is always a possibility, even if you do everything right. You must be prepared for the fact that you may not be able to handle your cat at all except maybe a quick careful rub through the fence. More often than not, this is the case. These are wild animals! Domestication takes thousands of years, not a few generations. See if you can volunteer somewhere that has big cats to learn all you can about behavior (yours and theirs). It may save your life, someone elses, and make for a happier cat. Also for safety you should get a CO2 fire extinguisher (not Halon) to keep next to the cage. If there's ever an attack or excape, a blast of CO2 is harmless but will spook a cat enough to get away or direct them where you want them to go. Even though the enclosure won't take up much room on your property, it will be nice to have that large buffer zone around your cat. Several acres is preferred. You do not want it visible to the public. If it is, build a wall. Once word gets out, people will come. Out of sight, out of mind. If they are tempted they will approach the cage and stick their fingers in, get bit, and sue you. Always have locks on both cage doors. Unfortunately it is not uncommon that angry people that don't approve will give you problems and/or poison or shoot your cat if they can get to it. You must have a perimeter fence on your property.

Uh... after reading this why would ANYONE want to own an exotic animal? I'm focusing on felines because it seems like they are all very popular as pets to some people out there.

There are a lot of interesting types, but none of them seem suitable for home - even what seems to be the most friendliest of the wild cats, the Serval. http://www.exoticcatz.com/speciesserval.html

Servals display some very unique and often endearing behaviors that set them apart from domestic cats. One of the most distinctive is the affectionate head butt. If you place your face at serval head height, you will receive a loving bang on the forehead from a purring wildcat! I’ve often been awakened in the middle of the night by loud purrs and the endearing bump, bump, bump of a serval saying “wake up and pet me!” with multiple head butts.

Sounds pretty normal. My cat does that all the time.

Servals also have extraordinary hearing. Their huge ears help them pinpoint the faintest of noises with great accuracy. I can rub two fingers together under a heavy blanket, creating no visible movement and no noise audible to human ears, and Sirocco will pounce on them with unerring precision from feet away.

Now that is amazing.

In many ways they act just like the cats you know; they purr, cuddle, pounce, play, jump on things, run if they get scared, etc. Those traits are just magnified.

Hmm, ok, doesn't sound that bad. "Magnified," right.

If you are a fan of stuffed animals, beanie babies, or cute little sofa pillows: beware! They and the serval will not be able to exist in the same room. I know what you’re thinking; I’ll just put them on the top shelf of my…. No dice. He can jump up there.

Domestic cats jump up on your windowsills and the refrigerator, rarely disturbing household objects; servals jump on your bookshelves, kitchen counters, tables, computer desks, and any other raised surface leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. While supremely athletic animals, servals are entirely lacking the “gracefully avoid knocking over objects on the shelf” gene. Knickknacks on the bookshelf? Gone, or later discovered buried in the litterbox. Stuff on your kitchen counter? Knocked over and sent flying several feet in random directions.

Unaltered domestic cats sometimes spray in the house; servals mark their territory up to 46 times an hour in the wild. Servals are much more prone to spraying and litter box problems than domestic cats.

Servals are somewhat infamous for swallowing strange things and requiring surgery to remove them. I know of one person whose serval underwent four separate surgeries during his lifetime to remove various foreign objects.

Translation: IF YOU TAKE THIS ANIMAL HOME, YOU'RE AN IDIOT.

No thanks.

Anyway, if anyone could shed some light on why some people might want to own exotic animals please say so.

One thing I did find rather interesting was mating domestic cats with some exotic cats. It's extremely expensive, but I guess if done right it will respect the house like a typical domestic cat does, but have traits of an exotic one, just more restrained.

 

[The Take Out Bandit]

So we can act all indignant and shocked when they eat someone's baby.

 

[SonnyBoy]

So we can act all indignant and shocked when they eat someone's baby.

Lets not forget that we blame the animal for acting like an animal and not a human being.

When that Tiger tried to kill that guy the tiger wasn't going crazy, he was acting sane. Now when that Tiger was riding on bicycles, thats when he was crazy. :lol

 

[IJoel]

Lets not forget that we blame the animal for acting like an animal and not a human being.

When that Tiger tried to kill that guy the tiger wasn't going crazy, he was acting sane. Now when that Tiger was riding on bicycles, thats when he was crazy. :lol

I blame that domesticated Corn Flakes bastard.

 

[Vormund]

I want a Tiger.

I'll never have one though. A Dolphin would be nice too...obviously that's not happening either.

 

[Mashing]

sorry for the off topic post but I just have to say how much your avatar rocks Vormund.