Dom Tigra - Tiger House

THE STORY OF 🐆GERD🐾🐾

Today we would like to introduce you to Gerd, a 21-year-old leopard who has been living with us since 2021.

After a 500-kilometer drive and some paperwork, we took a then-18-year-old leopard over from his previous owner. The leopard’s name was Gerd. Actually, the first owner called him Gerda, which was a female name. When the leopard turned out to be a male, his name was transformed into the male version of it. This is how Gerda became Gerd.

Most of his life, Gerd spent in a cage of about 2 square meters on a short leash, attached to the cage ceiling. Removing his collar and leash were the first things we did upon his arrival at his new home. His first enclosure at our place was about 36 square meters. We did not offer him more space right away so that he could get used to a new territory, and we could observe him and explore what kind of activities he would show and prefer. Would he in general be playing around, climbing, or running? At that moment, we had no idea at all.

Gerd was suffering from some health issues, including ingrown nails and rotting teeth. He was barely showing any interest in his surroundings and life in general, and we were afraid that his first winter with us would be his last.

We spent a lot of time and money on his medical treatments. The ingrown nails were removed, and his teeth were taken care of by the dentist so that they would not bother him anymore. This is when a sad old leopard slowly started turning into a true leopard.

At that time, we had a dream to give Gert a personal forest as a gift. People often ask us why old animals would need big enclosures, since they assume that old animals would mostly just sleep there. When we hear this kind of question, we ask back: “Have you ever offered a big enclosure to them?”

We were aware that Gerd was very old. If we converted his age into a human age, he would now be about 90 years old. We perfectly realized that Gerd didn’t have much time left. This is when our dream turned into a promise.

To offer Gerd the enclosure he deserved, we organized a crowdfunding campaign. Some things are just almost impossible for us yet to be organized by ourselves. But together with our followers and supporters we managed to keep our promise to Gerd. Thank to all the efforts of our friends, followers and supporters he now has his own forest within an enclosure of around 2000 square meters.

We truly hope that one day, when Gerd crosses the rainbow bridge, he will now manage to forgive us people for all the sufferings he had to go through.

If you want to see Gerd’s transformation, his first steps at our place, and his release in his personal forest, you can check out this video:
https://tinyurl.com/Gerd-and-his-own-forest

Keep following the pawprints of our furry family to make sure that you won’t miss a new story coming soon!

THE STORY OF 🐯🐾INFINITY & 🐯TESLA 🐾🐾

A bit more than 3 years ago, our tigers, Royce and Honda, became parents of two little cubs. Due to the fact that tigers' pregnancy takes 100–150 days, we were not sure when exactly the cubs could be born. Therefore, when Honda started preparing her nesting place and carrying her toys around, we just did our best to keep her living area as clean as possible and observe her through the web cameras as much as we could.

One of those days when nothing special seemed to be going on, Dima just took a look at the camera footage as usual. The next moment, he was already shouting,"Jana! Jana! We have got twins!" A tiny tiger boy and girl were born.

Honda immediately allowed us to come along and check up on her and her babies. At first, everything appeared to go well. However, the next day, we noticed Honda trying to “bury” her babies by digging them into the straw. We jumped in just in time before she actually would have laid down on them.

In order to avoid any unfortunate accidents, we decided to take the cubs away during the nighttime. The next morning, we twice tried to reunite the little tigers with their mom. However, it looked like Honda had no maternal instinct at all. She seemed to have no idea how to take care of her fur babies, acting like they were just toys. Lack of maternal instinct is by the way a very common problem among hybrid tigers born in captivity.

Honda started grabbing her cubs and throwing them around like if they were some puppets she was playing with. Our second reunion attempt was almost tragic for the little male cub. Honda started playing with him really rough, trying to throw him up and catch him with her paw, just like cats do when playing with a toy. Therefore, we decided to take the tiny tigers away from Honda and nurture them by ourselves at home.

Honda and Royce didn't worry a second about our decision. They immediately got together, cuddling and playing around like there was no birth at all. Even Honda's milk production stopped right away, without any medication. We, however, had a way more challenging time providing the tiny, weak and helpless tiger babies all the best care we could. We decided to call the little boy Infinity and the little girl Tesla.

Infinity and Tesla are still staying together at our place. They live in the same enclosure with one more furry friend. A young female tiger, Tahoe, joined their company some time ago. The story of Tahoe will for sure be shared with you in one of our following posts. As for now, if you want to see the recap of three years of Infinity's and Tesla's lives at our place, check out the following video on our YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/3-years-of-Infinity-and-Tesla
And don't forget to keep an eye on this page to make sure that you will not miss our next story!

THE STORY OF 🐯 ROLLS-ROYCE🐾🐾

As you probably already expected, one day we again received a call about a litter of tiger cubs whose mother was refusing to take care of them. A person who called us also mentioned that the cubs had strange tiny spots on their fur, having no idea where these spots came from.

We were offered to redeem one male cub. Since it would be about 5000 km of driving to pick him up, the owners told us they would transport him by plane, but we had to pay everything in advance. We did so, and after a couple of days, a little fur ball weighing 700g only arrived at our place. He was really tiny and indeed covered with small spots all over his fur. We decided to call him Rolls-Royce.

The spots turned out to be the symptoms of a dermatologic disease our little tiger was infected with after birth. Since this disease turned out to be contagious, we also ended up giving treatments to all the other pets we had.

Another medical problem was related to the fact that Royce was growing and gaining weight too fast, becoming a really large tiger. The development of his bones and skeleton could barely catch up with his growing process; therefore, he ended up being diagnosed with rickets. It took us quite a while to get rickets under control, but sun and live food helped us a lot. However, sometimes Royce still finds it difficult to use all of his four paws simultaneously. Sometimes he does not jump very well, unless he jumps for food.

Growing up, Royce became a very strong and powerful tiger. He is probably the heaviest of all the other tigers who live with us. About two years ago, when Royce was 2,5 years old, he already was weighing around 325 kg during the winter and around 300 kg during the summer. Due to the fact that tigers keep growing up to the age of five, he then became even heavier.

Despite his size, Royce is the most affectionate and social tiger in our family. Actually, he does not like to stay without humans and likes to be entertained. If we don't visit him for a couple of hours in the evening, he will mourn and meow loudly, showing us that he feels totally abandoned and left alone. This almost makes us feel like bad parents and guilty traitors.

Nowadays, Royce lives in the same enclosure with Honda, next to an enclosure of Aston. (You can find the stories of Honda and Aston in our previous posts). Moreover, unexpectedly, Royce and Honda even managed to become parents. Some of their cubs are living with us, and we will tell you their stories in our following posts. Keep following the paw prints of our furry family to make sure you won't miss a thing!

THE STORY OF 🐯HONDA🐾🐾

One day, we received a phone call about a litter of cubs born in a zoo. By then, no one was really interested in them. Moreover, one female cub appeared to be neither very social nor a good eater. This is why we were asked whether we would want to take care of her.

It took us about 2–3 weeks to organize all the papers and about 6,000 km of winter drive (the outside temperature was about -30 Celsius) to pick up the little girl. However, she did surprisingly well and upon arrival, she turned out to be amazingly cute, extremely smart and very kind. We decided to give her the name "Honda".

Compared to our other large cats, Honda spent the least time living inside our house. After quite a short time, she would sit by the door in the evenings, meowing like if she wanted to say, "Please, let me go outside to explore my own territory. "From that moment on, we have let her spend more time inside an enclosure, up to the moment when she totally got used to her tiger life outside.

Honda grew up to be an independent tiger lady with an attitude. She does not want to be treated with any familiarities that she doesn’t like. Actually, there is quite a lot that she does not tolerate. Honda is very well aware of her own worth. And still, for her “own” humans, Honda remains a very sensitive and touchy large cat.

Now she lives next to our tiger Aston (see our previous post if you haven't heard of his story yet) in one enclosure with another tiger named Royce. The story of Royce will be shared with you in our next post. Keep following the paw prints of our large cats to make sure that you won’t miss it!

THE STORY OF 🐯ASTON-MARTIN, or how it all started...🐾🐾

One day we were called by a small private mobile zoo. They had two newborn tiger cubs fighting for their lives. By that moment, Jana had already been working as a veterinary specialist for 15 years, this is why they reached us for help.

Upon arrival, we were totally shocked. It was the first time we would see completely bold tiger cubs, almost lacking noses. The cubs were just one week old, and their mother refused taking care of them. Unfortunately that happens quite often among the hybride tigers born in captivity. The cubs were a mix-breed of an Ussurian and a Bengal tiger.

The tiny cubs have not been getting proper food and care; therefore, they developed an allergic reaction, lost their fur and almost destroyed their noses, constantly itching and scratching them within their cage. We provided the first medical aid and returned home completely upset. Almost immediately, we agreed that if we didn't manage to save at least one of the cubs, we would never forgive ourselves.

We started looking for money and managed to borrow just enough to redeem one cub. We just could not find a sufficient amount to redeem them both. The zoo declined our suggestion to pay in terms for the second cub, which left us completely heartbroken.

Two weeks later, they called us back. The second cub was almost dying. Unfortunately, at that moment, medically, there was no more chance for him to survive.

Having at least saved the other tiny tiger, we started doing all we could to let him live. The baby tiger cubs are completely helpless. They have to eat every 4 hours; they are not even able to defecate by themselves and need to be stimulated to do that.

Our tiny tiger survived. After one year of having him around, we had to make a difficult decision: either find him a decent home or take a new, challenging organizational step that would let him stay with us.

We were really nervous and doubting, but our furry friend became so dependent on us that we just couldn’t get it over our hearts to leave him behind with a person or within the circumstances we could not fully trust.

This is how Aston, fully named Aston-Martin, became the first furry member of our large cats family.

Having decided to keep him, we started investing all the money we had in building a proper territory and facilities for him. At the same time, our future purpose was born: having a place where we could adopt large cats with a tragic destiny that were neither suitable for further breeding and therefore species protection, nor able to get proper care by other caretakers and professional institutions.

In this case, we would bet the last hope and chance for these unfortunate animals to survive.

From that moment on, we started training Aston a bit more so that he would get used to people and other pets. Actually, with him, it was not a very big deal. Due to our personal circumstances at that moment of our lives, he had been staying around us all the time together with our american pitbull Tor (the sweetest nanny ever), who was nurturing him and kinda showing him that there was no need to be scared of us, humans.

This is where our story has started about 7 years ago. Aston has still been living happily ever after with us, nowadays surrounded by more furry friends that we managed to save. We will be happy to share their stories with you in our following posts!

Hello dear friends and welcome to the page of Tiger House! 🐯

We are Dima and Jana, founders of a non-profit hospice for large wild cats. Having a professional background in veterinary and wild animal training, we are doing daily the best we can to professionally take care of those animals that have become disabled and can not stay in any zoo or other care place for some reason.

We redeemed our first tiger, named Aston, from a mobile zoo where he otherwise would end up living (or dying) in miserable circumstances. From that moment on, we became dedicated to creating a place where we could give some quality lifetime and medical treatment to those unfortunate big cats about whom no other organization would care. Moreover, we are building up an educational and professional center for veterinary specialists working with big wild cats. Together with our amazing medical team, we provide examinations and treatments of wild animals in need and share our knowledge with other professionals.

We hope that you will enjoy meeting our wonderful animal-family. Subscribe and follow their paw prints! 🐾🐾