This is a nice little cat story. Well, actually, the cat wasn’t that little. Although the lady had registered her lioness cub as a domestic cat, she weighed 110 pounds, which is about 50 kg.
Some domestic cat! Not happy with simply registering her lioness as a domestic cat and treating her as a pet she appears to have decided to take a train ride with her lioness and somehow managed to get the cat onto a train and into a train compartment with other passengers.
Heaven knows how she achieved all that without at least somebody asking questions to any train official who was on hand. Perhaps that is what happened because eventually the transport police turned up and took the lioness off her having tranquillised the young big cat. The lion was then handed over to a specialist and beyond that point I don’t know what happened. I sincerely hope that this lady gets her lioness back. Or do I? On second thoughts no.
The problem is that this lion will end up in a zoo. It is all a total disaster for the cat.
Apparently, she was in was a sleeper train travelling to Yekaterinburg which is 1,400 kilometres (850 miles) east of Moscow.
The problems began on the train when the lioness started to behave aggressively. I’m not sure whether that means the lion behaved aggressively towards other people or was simply agitated. You can understand why she could be agitated. The situation was totally unsuited to a lion. The owner could not cope with the situation and obviously things got out of hand.
The lioness was originally kept in a cage by the lady who was in one of the train’s sleeper cars. The lady let the lioness out of her cage which caused mayhem and then she managed to lock the lioness in her sleeper car, whereupon she asked for help, we are told!
The human fascination with keeping exotic wild cats of all sizes, especially the big cats, is not confined to any single country, clearly. We know that some Americans like to keep exotic animals including wild cats as pets and it seems that some Russians feel the same way.
You wonder how this lady got hold of a lioness in the first place. She should never have been able to obtain a lioness as a cub. And she shouldn’t have been able to register the lion as a pet domestic cat. Do people have to register pet cats in Russia? It got worse from that point onwards by the sound of it.
It all seems a bit lax to me from the beginning of the story to the end of it. No doubt a number of railway employees are being interrogated at this minute as to how they allowed it all do happen. The true loser: the lion of course.
Oh yes, the good old days of gentlemen vets!
Mine would shout and even throw things around in a temper, but I got his measure lol I only had to put my coat on and say I’d had enough and he would apologise ‘Don’t go Ruthie Ruth’ He always called me that ‘Give yourself a rise in this week’s pay’ lol
But he never got mad at any animal, only at cruel people.
My old vet too, R, with his thick southern drawl.
He was too much of a gentleman to curse, but his messages were clear.