Glowing Eyes and Darkness Growls: Big Cat Rescue Night Tours

So you meet an amazing women at a social function and ask her out . Where do you take her for your first date? If she's someone you're only semi-interested in, probably to a movie or a bar or something typical like that. But when you really want to impress a woman, you look for something more original and exciting, and if you have connections, you pull some strings.

Big Cat Rescue is a non-profit sanctuary in Tampa, Florida for abused, abandoned and retired-from-the-entertainment business wild felines. At Big Cat, you will find many different species of cats such as lions, tigers, jaguars, cougars, bobcats and caracals (look them up). For a small donation, visitors are treated to a tour of the facility and told amazing, yet sometimes tragic stories about its resident felines. Stories such as unsuccesful attempts to breed white tigers, which in actuality is a genetic defect, and the casualties of such a practice. Breeding white tigers with orange tigers sometimes produces tigers with gold or yellow coats that are often born cross-eyed or defective in other ways and are either abandoned or put to sleep. The tour gives visitors a new educational perspective on some of the horrors of breeding wild cats for pets or entertainment purposes.

Not all the stories told are tragic however. Many of the felines residing at Big Cat are retired performers from the circus or former pets that weren't abused or abandoned, but just needed a new home. It is also astounding to hear how much it actually costs to run and maintain a facility like Big Cat, which depends solely on private donations from tours and corporations who generously give large contributions.

Big Cat Rescue also offers night tours of the facility on the last Friday of every month. Now, since I was somewhat smitten with my new European female friend, I decided to use my connections at Big Cat and call in a favor for a night tour on a Friday night that wasn't the last Friday of the month.