Okay, I’m about to get pretty lame. I posted an amazing photo of cheetahs on a truck that came from National Geographics “My Shot” contest. This is a photo contest where anyone can submit their photos to Nat Geo and people can vote for them. So I’ve submitted a photo and I hope you do to!

I submitted a picture of Kshama, a tiger from In-Sync Exotics, the big cat rescue. She was purchased by an individual from a breeder, and when he decided he couldn’t keep her he put her up for sale in the newspaper. Someone familiar with In-Sync saw the ad and bought her and immediately gave her up to In-Sync, knowing that they would be able to provide a safe and loving home for her.

I chose this picture of Kshama because 10 years later she is no longer the scraggly, ill cub that was brought to In-Sync. She is loved and content and she chuffs as you walk by, showing you her belly. She is an amazing cat in an amazing home.

She is symbolic of all of the tigers that are brought into homes that are unprepared for them. There are sadly, many more tigers in Texas in private hands than there are in the wild, and Texas laws make that easy. Tigers are cheap and easy to find, which makes them impulse buys. When they are purchased I doubt that the owner considers that the little cub they are buying could grow up to 650 lbs and eat 30 plus lbs of meat a day, but because they can be bought at 2 months old out of the news paper people are unprepared. Then cats end up at In-Sync, if they’re lucky. Or if they’re not, which happens much more often, they end up starving, dying of vitamin deficiencies or other health complications.