Jacksonville's Catty Shack sanctuary is entertaining it’s rescued lions and tigers with donated Christmas trees.
And staff said the trees, among other household goods, make excellent gifts for the massive cats.
Catty Shack Ranch staff member Kurt Lessenthien was driving between big cat enclosures in a golf cart Friday. He stopped to greet a tiger who ran up to the fence.
“You want to come up here and say hi Spiderman?” Lessenthien said.
Spiderman is a 9-year-old rescue. He’s one of 35 big cats staff members care for.
The golf cart’s next stop was in front of a pen containing three discarded Christmas trees, and three female tigers. First they sniffed and then they pounced on the branches.
“The Christmas trees are a fun way for them to get both a new texture and a smell,” Lessenthien said. “They’ll get to play with them, they’ll roll in them. Some totally ignore them. They’re cats. They’re all individuals.”
Christmas tree collecting is a tradition at Catty Shack. Some years they’ve had to turn people away because they’ve received too many. Lessentein said the facility can still take a few more this year but, "We don’t need people to go out of their way to bring us Christmas trees," he said.
Instead, he said, people can support the sanctuary in other ways. The rescue needs things like water hoses, ant-killer and even old bottles of perfume. Lessenthien said they spray the perfume on the big cats’ toys.
“It keeps them thinking and keeps them exploring their surroundings,” he said.
Needed items can be found on the sanctuary’s wishlist. People can also symbolically adopt a cat to support the sanctuary.
Reporter Lindsey Kilbride can be reached at lkilbride@wjct.org, 904-358-6359 or on Twitter at @lindskilbride.
