Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
June 8, 2016 10:00 a.m.
Since summer is rapidly approaching, so I thought I’d throw out a suggestion for those of you who may have grandchildren visiting or for those whose school children will be on summer break. It’s only about 25 minutes away from the island but it is another world.
Catty Shack Ranch Wildlife Sanctuary is a most unusual place where you can see all manner of wild cats. Its mission is to maintain a home for endangered wild cats and educate the public about their plight. The cats include lions, tigers, cougars, leopards, panthers, as well as smaller cats. When I was there, they even had an Arctic fox. Catty Shack accepts cats from small zoos, exhibits, and takes care of them. They have a no breeding, no trading, no buying, and no selling policy. They also accept exotic cats from people who thought it might be neat to have an animal that weighs 2 to 3 times as much as they do. When they accept a cat, they make a commitment to keep that animal in good health and well fed.
To maintain the ranch, Catty Shack offers tours. Currently those tours run Thursday during the day and Friday and Saturday at night. The tours take about 45 minutes and the current cost is less than snacks at the local movie theatres. The ranch also runs a small gift shop and an on-line store. The staff are volunteers (no paid employees) so 100% of the proceeds from donations goes to maintaining the animals.
On the tours, you will get a chance to see each cat enclosure and get a little background on the individuals and their species. The tour guides are no strangers to the animals. When we were there, our guide got a huge tiger to roll over like a house cat. At another enclosure, three tigers were sharing a large tub of water. Yes, unlike a lot of cats, tigers apparently like to bathe.
After the tour, you gather to see the feeding. Some 600 pounds of meat (mostly chicken) disappears down furry throats. At the feeding we saw, the ranch director held a piece of chicken up high on the chain link fence and a 500 pound tiger literally climbed a couple of feet up the fence to get it.
The website www.cattyshack.org has all of the information about the ranch, its history and goals. Catty Shack is a non-profit 501©3 organization. The ranch opened to the public in 2004. It is located at 1860 Starratt Road. Starratt runs off of US-17 between Yulee and -295. I think your children and or grandchildren are going to love it (mine did).
Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. She is a chair of Arts & Culture Nassau, a city commission charged with support of the arts in Nassau County. She serves on FSCJ’s Curriculum Committee for the Center for Lifelong Learning. She is also the chair of the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.