Exotic Feline Rescue Center

Joacim, Izzy, my nephew JT and I went to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center on Saturday. It's located near Center Point, which is about an hour west of Indianapolis. This is a wonderful place that takes cats that were neglect or abused, or confiscated by officials. The sad thing is that for every 1 cat they take in, they have to turn down about 40. It costs around $20,000 for one enclosure, and depending on the situtation the cats were brought in depends on if they can be socialized with other cats. The center gets all of it's funding from gate receipts and merchandising, and everyone that works there is a volunteer. The owner of the property, Joe, even rents out a room in his house where you can get up close and personal with the cats. Sounds like quite an adventure. It's a wonderful place, and I encourage anyone that wants to learn more to either go there for a visit, or at the least check out their website.

The center was having a pumpkin party for the kitties, where you could bring your Jack-o-Lantern to give to the cats to play with. We didn't bring a pumpking with us (we didn't get any pumpkins this year :( ) but we were very excited to see them.

This post will have lots of photos...hope you all enjoy them!


Here's the wagon full of Jack-o-Lanterns. They put meat inside the pumpkins to entice the cats.


This tiger is protecting his pumpkin


This lioness was enjoying the fun and the weather (which was BEAUTIFUL!!!)


This lion reminded me A LOT of my cat, Chopper. There's no way you could call this kitty "underfed" :)


These lions were in this position everytime we came around their enclosure, which ended up being 4 different times. Doesn't look like too bad of a life for them now, eh?


Here's Joacim, Izzy and JT watching an enclosure


This is a beautiful, majestic cat (although a tad bit grumpy)


Here's our friend Missy with Izzy. Izzy had a great time with her, right Missy :)


This tiger was one in a group of tigers was the most fun to watch. They were so playful! I have a video of this tiger that is a lot of fun to watch, but I'm having some issues uploading it, so whenever I get it done, I'll post it.


This kitty was also fond of jumping on the fence and having his picture taken


This cat was stalking my nephew. That was one of the coolest things to observe...there were several cats that seemed to be very interested in my nephew. It's as if they were able to pick the weakest one out of the bunch, and their sights were set on JT. This photo was taken while the kitty was looking at JT.


Here's Izzy and me...the stroller wasn't going to work very well in the terrain, so we used the sling.


And here's Izzy sucking on her toes. I got a little tired from carrying her, and she was getting so warm, that I took her socks off. She had a great time grabbing them and putting them in her mouth :)