Originally Posted by
Drew Wiley
What a wonderful experience, Bob! I once worked for a fellow who kept two fully toothed, fully-clawed mtn lions in his house, lounging on his sofa. He said he didn't like the way they looked at him, so eventually got rid of them. There was a beautiful gray tamed one near here at the Marine World theme park, which they walked around on a leash just like the cheetah. Lions and tigers, however, were only exercise either off-hours or within their penned areas. It was popular to watch a handler using a huge thick rope to play with tigers when they were swimming around in their enclosure pool. But one of the lions terribly mauled its handler one day; he barely survived, and called it a cat and mouse experience. The couger and cheetah were brought out into the open and had the same benign smile-like expression, and loved being scratched right in front of people, but only by their official handlers, of course. I'd be a lot more wary of a bobcat than a pet cougar, although my brother had a tame bobcat in his house in the Oregon desert - they seem to be a more mild-mannered subspecies there. I never had any luck trying to tame bobcat kittens.
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