Kitty in the Clink

Yesterday the news from Ottawa Ontario (capital of Canada) included a story about a six-month old African lion missing from the Kitigan Zibi Algonquin First Nation reserve, north of Ottawa near Maniwaki Quebec.

Well, in my mind anyway, the lion (named Boomer) is actually missing from Africa where it rightfully belongs. Today this baby lion named Boomer is cooling his heels in jail (yes you read that right.. a baby lion is in jail)  until wildlife authorities come to take him into their custody.

His crime?  Being cute, being exotic and escaping from his new owner.

Jail may be a step up for this jungle king, compared to where he escaped from. Boomer, the baby lion purchased and brought to the reserve only two days ago, was reportedly left chained ouside his owner’s home. Not surprisingly Boomer managed to break free…  

The news report says that this wild cat is bottle-fed, toilet trained and not aggressive.
Interesting!
My guess would be that he is more likely bewildered, afraid and has huge seperation anxiety. The temperatures alone in this northern climate this week would be enough to make domesticated kitty cats look for indoor comfort, so I can only imagine what this poor baby cat must have felt. No mention is made in the news report about where this baby lion was before arriving at the reserve, so Boomer may have been stressed from travel as well.

The biggest question for me is what are the laws there about owning an African lion and keeping it is a residential community. And, what are the costs involved to the public in money and emotions for this catastrophe? When the news broke, schools and daycares were closed immediately… parents called… panic. A heat-sensing helicopter and a police crew were dispatched to find this big lost baby cat. Next the wildlife services are to be called in…

It will be interesting to see how this story turns out. Since this lion appears to be highly dependent on humans already, what will happen to him? Will Boomer end up in a zoo? With any luck he will go to a larger zoo (like the Toronto Zoo) where exotic animals have large areas of land in which to roam. It would be great to believe that Boomer might be returned to his African home, but by now after all the human contact he has apparently had it may possibly be too late (and therefore dangerous for this baby lion to try to survive on his own in the wild).

As a great lover of animals, I really wonder what the people who buy large exotic animals as pets are thinking about. Like the person or people who decided to buy a large deadly snake and keep it in an apartment in Toronto in Canada. Large deadly snake. This story made news in the dead of winter when the snake owners decided the snake was getting out of control (or they couldn’t feed it enough, or they got bored with it, or they just needed a vacation… who knows the real story here!) they dumped it on a main road… in the middle of winter. And again the police got the great job of having to rescue this dumped pet. Amazing. This may sound like a rant directed at Canada, but it is not. There are people everywhere around the world who have skewed ideas about pet ownership.

Maybe a training course for people who want pets would be a good idea. To help them understand about the large responsibility that owning a pet entails. It could give them information about how to cope and where to get help if the responsibility of pet ownership gets to be too much. And an understanding of community resposibility and laws about keeping pets… and dare I open a can of worms (not pet worms) to add, maybe this course could also give guidelines about what should not be kept as a pet… like this poor bewildered baby lion that is now sitting in jail.

Check here to read more about Boomer.