I visited Cat Tales today. It is a very small, privately owned facility. The collection consists almost entirely of big cats, with a couple of American black bears. The enclosures were up to USDA standards and the animals appeared well cared for. The facility was very clean, and the animals appear to have a lot of interaction with their human caretakers (through the fence of course). The collection was made up mostly of tigers with animals of Amur and Bengal descent and a couple of white tigers. There were also a few lions, a handful of leopards including a melanistic individual and one that was alleged to be a North Chinese leopard. Other cats present were pumas, bobcats and servals.
Finally someone from ZooChat has visited Cat Tales. I have known of them for several years, but never made it up there.
Cat Tales held their first fundraising gala in 20 years this weekend with the hopes of being able to fund facility improvements towards ZAA accreditation. The event concluded with a presentation of a conceptual relocation master plan done by a landscape architecture student: Full project Will be interesting to see if they can get enough local support to actually make the move happen.
Thanks for posting the link. The 49-page project to relocate the entire zoo looks ambitious but attainable as long as a significant amount of funding can be raised. I visited Cat Tales in 2014 and the exhibit quality is incredibly poor, with tiny chain-link cages everywhere. I'm skeptical whether this ambitious plan will ever see the light of day, but it would be amazing for the dedicated staff at the facility if a miracle occurred and the plan came to fruition. As things stand, Cat Tales has enclosures that are smaller and worse than many American roadside zoos and extra funding is basically nonexistent.
That is a really nice plan and well put-together document. This new facility looks like it could be AZA quality and there are some very inspired species choices as well, although jaguar feels a bit out of place considering the others are cold tolerant North American/Asian species. Fingers crossed they're able to make this happen.
