2006 Vacation/Travel Supplement

A place to call home: Rescued exotic cats are Joe Taft’s pride and joy near Center Point

By Mary Ann Wyand

CENTER POINT—Look but don’t touch.

It’s more than a rule—it’s an order based on safety concerns—for visitors at the Exotic Feline Rescue Center located on 108 wooded acres in rural Clay County.

That’s because the rescue center owned by Joe Taft is the permanent home of more than 200 very big cats—lions, tigers, leopards, pumas, bobcats, ocelots and lynx—who had been abused, abandoned or left homeless by former owners and now live in large outdoor cages covering 30 acres of woodland.

Taft and his well-trained staff of seven full-time employees and four part-time employees welcome visitors from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. on Tuesdays through Sundays throughout the year and on Monday when it is a holiday.

The admission fees of $10 for adults and $5 for children helps pay for the center’s operating costs, which are substantial with several hundred huge and hungry felines to take care of every day for many years.

“I think most people don’t understand the conditions that a lot of these animals were kept in prior to the time that they came here,” Taft said during an interview last July, “and what their chances of survival are if we didn’t take them in here.”

He rises at 4 a.m. each day and often works until past 9 p.m. with staff members to feed the cats and clean their large cages.

“These [exotic] animals are quite commonly found in extremely poor living conditions,” Taft said, “completely lacking in medical care and malnourished. The owners didn’t know enough, didn’t care enough, didn’t realize the cost involved, didn’t realize the safety issues and didn’t realize the difficulties of finding a veterinarian to care for these animals.”

A beautiful and rare white Siberian tiger is blind now, he said, but is happy in her cage at the center. Two leopard kittens were illegally owned by a man in Long Island, N.Y., but now are growing up in the company of other big cats.

“When the animals come here, we have a really good success rate with them,” Taft said. “We have some tigers that are 22 years old. Once people visit here, the animals speak for themselves.”

Taft and Jean Herrberg, the assistant director, like to share stories about each big cat to educate people about their needs. They wish people would quit purchasing exotic felines as pets.

“The first thing I tell people who visit is to keep their hands away from the cages,” he said. “One animal escaped from his owner and ran loose in a city. A tiger killed his trainer and was left abandoned in Minnesota.”

They invite people to become patrons by sponsoring the exotic cats and welcome adults as overnight guests at special accommodations beside Taft’s house, which has animal cages within easy viewing distance.

There were only 15 exotic cats at the rescue center when Herrberg, a former teacher, started volunteering there in 1993.

“All of these cats have been born and bred in captivity for many generations,” she said. “They’re certainly not pets and they can’t be released back into the wild. They’re caught in between. They will live out their lives here at one of the finest rescue centers in the country.”

(For information about visiting hours and directions, log on to the center Web site at www.exoticfelinerescuecenter.org.) †