Wild at Heart

One of the state's best-kept secrets borders a tiny gravel road off of Highway 46 in Center Point, Ind., about an hour west of Bloomington. The entrance, almost hidden, leads to a stretch of land with some unexpected inhabitants -- almost 200 exotic cats.\nExotic Feline Rescue Center owner Joe Taft walked slowly up a grass path between an enclosure with two servals and another with three lions. Even with his baseball cap on he squinted into the sun as he approached the chain link fence, the only thing that separates the cats from the humans at the center. To Taft and his staff, they're all humans.\nEven Taft's clothes showed how much he loves his 192 friends, all of different colors, sizes and breeds. The sleeves of his blue button down shirt were rolled up and the fabric was torn in various places. His shirt and blue jeans were stained with splotches of red drying into a crusty, deep burgundy because he had to help cut up the body of a dead horse donated by a farmer in order to serve his feline guests, who eagerly awaited their lunch in each enclosure. \n"Sometimes that's what you have to do when you're the boss," he said. "You have to help out where it's needed."\nThe grisly reminder of the food chain that sometimes greets the center's guests adds to the natural atmosphere, but it's still in stark contrast with the picturesque property. The 108 acres Taft bought in order to pursue his passion has been sectioned off into "15 years' worth" of massive enclosures for the cats he rescues. The property has areas of field and woods, which provides the cats with shade in the summer and space to roam. Once cats inhabit an enclosure, the area is not mowed, so cats feel more at home in the natural vegetation.\nEnclosures vary in size depending on how many cats are in the enclosure and how big the cats are, but each cage gives cats more than adequate room to play, eat and hide if they get tired of visitors. Some of the biggest enclosures, which are generally for lions and tigers, are about 20,000 square feet. Right now, they're about to start building new enclosures for cats that will be arriving later in the summer.\n"We average taking in two cats a month," he said. "That's a huge number. We've taken 11 cats so far this year."\nThat is a huge number, especially considering the center started rather unintentionally. Though Taft loved big cats, it was never his plan to run such a large facility.\nTaft's first big cat was an ocelot he bought in the mid-1960s. He also had a leopard for 20 years who had its own room in his house, which opened up to an outdoor enclosure.\n"My house was modified," he said. "It had chain link over the windows and double-locking doors. ... It was not your typical house pet. This was a leopard. It was more like there was a cot in the cat house for the zoo keeper."\nNow Taft gets several of his animals from people who think they can handle big cats as pets, but it often ends with abuse and neglect. He even admitted his own pet purchases were not exactly good ideas, but at least his experience ended happily.\n"I had no idea what I was doing. I was going to get a Lotus and a cheetah and I was going to drive very fast in my Lotus and my cheetah was going to sit perfectly well behaved and happy next to me. Well that really corresponds well with reality," he laughed. "I looked at Lotuses and got an MG and looked at cheetahs and got an ocelot. The ocelot had me hooked right from the very first minute. The cars came and went, but that cat, she grabbed my heart and I've had big cats ever since." \nSeveral years after Taft got his first pets, the idea for a rescue center was born. In 1990 Taft learned of two tigers that "were in a lot of trouble" because they had been locked in the back of a Volkswagon van for an extended period of time, he said.\n"One was blind and crippled and most of his baby teeth were rotted out," he said. "I took those two cats in and that's what started the rescue center. I came here in 1991 and bought the original property, and since then we've bought two adjoining pieces of property. Now we have 108 acres all together."\nAs Taft strolled by the enclosures, many of the cats came up to the fence to greet their guardian. Autumn, a full-grown female cougar, rubbed up against the fence, but when she saw Taft wasn't alone she briefly withdrew.\n"If you don't want pets don't lean like you want pets, OK?" he told her.\nBut within seconds she was back at the fence, letting him pet her as a loud, rumbling purr shook through her body.\nNext to Autumn, another cougar named Charlie laid peacefully in his enclosure a few feet from the fence.\n"Charlie is one of two cats here that are blind," Taft explained. "He has a condition that deteriorates retina."\nAt the sound of Taft's voice, Charlie got up and walked to the fence and Taft reached out his hand for Charlie to smell. Immediately, Charlie lay down again up against the fence right in front of Taft.\n"Most of them know me and quite a number will come if I call them. Two of the lions in there I can go in with," Taft said, pointing to the next enclosure.\nHe went to the fence surrounding the home of three lions and called for Tucker, one of the cats he's closest with. All three lions were lying on the other side of the enclosure but perked up when they heard his voice. They raised themselves briefly to locate Taft, but then curled back up to nap in the sun. They apparently didn't want to perform for an audience.\n"With the exception of a few cats I have a close relationship with, I won't go in the cages with a cat unless there's a reason," he said. "It's not standard procedure to be in the cage with the cats."\nMedical concerns often provide a reason for Taft to enter cages, but the cats often receive their vaccinations and basic care through the fence. For more serious problems, cats are professionally anesthetized and brought to the new, on-site and elaborate clinic Taft built in his basement. A veterinarian who lives about 10 miles from the center regularly cares for the cats if they become sick or need to be spayed or neutered.\nThe new clinic has helped both the staff and the cats, since simple medical procedures used to prove difficult to complete. Before the inception of the clinic, Taft had to cart new cats all the way to the University of Illinois in order to get them spayed, a requirement for all cats that live at the center. The entire process was expensive, complicated and would engage almost the entire staff for two days, he said. Now cats can be spayed on-site and Taft can ensure they're getting the best care.\nAs Taft continued to walk along the path, lions and tigers happily lunched on the animal parts he had cut up only a half-hour before. Female lions dragged a horse head around their enclosure while tigers shared their meat and frolicked in water bins next door. Taft said the center goes through about 3,000 pounds of meat each day and that they depend on farmers and hunters to donate food. Farmers bring in horses and cows that have died of natural causes and hunters occasionally bring in extra meat that they don't have room for or don't want to eat. If they're running low on food, they'll get money from donors to buy chicken, said five-year staff member Suzanne Taylor.\n"The cats are fed six days a week, once a day," Taft said. "One day they fast, and that's weather dependent. When it's cold, they have meat in front of them all the time. That horse head weighs about 200 pounds and it will feed those seven cats; they'll still be eating on it tomorrow when we take it out. During the summer they're usually given what they'll eat. Lions sometimes fast up to three days in the summer because it gets so hot that they don't want to eat. Tigers are quite often fasted two days a week. Not consecutive days a week, though."\nFor most of the cats, an abundance of food and enclosures with toys, vegetation, climbing towers and water bins is more like a luxury hotel than a rescue center. Most cats came from breeders who shoved them into small cages, from circuses where they were mistreated or from private owners who didn't properly care for them and ended up in jail for various reasons. Some were in such poor medical condition that they were near death by the time they reached the center. Others were so sparingly fed that they were severely underweight and every bone in their bodies was visible through their thick coats of fur. But now, they're happy, healthy, well fed and have a good home for the rest of their lives.\nAnd the cats offer something quite unique for visitors -- a chance to see wild animals up close. The center is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Though it's a nonprofit organization, the staff asks for donations of $10 for adults and $5 for children who wish to tour the facility. For $120, guests can stay overnight in a small apartment for two attached to Taft's house. Overnight guests get a private entrance, access to the facility when it's closed and get to pet one of the animals. Several of the cats also live right outside the door of the apartment and guests can see them from the window.\nFrance Knable and John Smith, two Bloomington residents, opted to stay the night last week as a birthday present for Smith, Knable said. It was the second visit for Knable, a French teacher at Bloomington High School North, who had brought two visiting teachers from France who were in Bloomington for an exchange a few years ago. The overnight visit was Smith's first trip.\n"It's definitely interesting," he said as he looked around the apartment. "It feels kind of like Jurassic Park."\nKnable was looking forward to touring the facility again and possibly going on a nighttime walk.\n"I love cats so when I found out about this place I've been wanting to come out for a long time," she said. "I wanted to spend the night because cats howl at night and I want to hear them."\nTaylor and Taft both said people don't know what they're missing until they visit the center.\n"If you like big cats, you'll never see big cats like this anywhere else—this close to them and this rich of a habitat and this many of them," Taft said. "People come here and say it's the greatest zoological experience they've ever had … and all these animals are rescue animals and deserve your support"