Tabula 

Sex: Female
Born:Unknown
Available for Adoption!

Tabula arrived at CARE in the summer of 2010 looking like a fat, stuffed, Thanksgiving turkey. She was scared, and she was unhealthily overweight. CARE rescued Tabula from a private big cat owner near Midland, TX where she lived some ten years in conditions big cats are simply not meant to live in. She was declawed and living in a cage which was roughly 10’x10’ with low ceilings and concrete floors. She ate mostly turkey and milk every day, which, coupled with no space for exercise, contributed to her tremendous weight gains over the years. When she first came to CARE, she did not know what grass felt like under her paws, and she didn’t know how big the sky could be. Those first few weeks were a stimuli overload for our poor lioness, and she spent almost every minute of every day hunkered underneath a wooden house inside a small lock-out enclosure which accessed her main enclosure. She wanted to make her space feel small, which in turn made her feel safe because it was all she had ever known. Her CAREkeepers had to be extra careful with this special girl so as to not upset her during the transition. They had to make sure to limit their interaction with her and take baby steps in getting her acclimated to her new surroundings. Slowly over time, she started to warm up to people, (mostly male volunteers at CARE- no one really knows why, but oh well, that’s lions for ya! ^_^) and because she finally had space to walk around in, and she was also being fed high-quality livestock meat on a proper feeding schedule her weight finally started to shed (at least 200 pounds!!!). She is fast becoming one of the funniest, quirkiest, and most popular cats here at CARE. She constantly has a puzzled look on her face, and she spends a lot of time rolling around on her back and “paddling” the air with her paws. She started off her stay at CARE scared of the grass under her feet, and now she struts around like she owns the place!!

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