Not So Fast Cat Lady

http://sakinoclub.com/news/story.asp?id=71506

The QueQue

By Current news team

The Queque - September 1, 2010
Wild Bunch ruptures

Ron and Carol Asvestas built it, then screwed it up; next, daughter Nicole García sacked Mom and Dad; then, the new board, led by Jamie and Michelle Anthony-Cryer, sacked García. Such has been the very wild history of the Wild Animal Orphanage. If the cycle is to continue, who will sack the Cryers? That is, if there is a Wild Animal Orphanage left at all.

On August 23, Laurie Gage, big cat specialist for the USDA, posted a message on a Google animal-lovers’ group reading: “The Wild Animal Orphanage near San Antonio, Texas is having difficulty caring for their animals … They are now trying to find homes for 55 tigers, 14 lions, 3 cougars, 6 wolf hybrids, 2 old (17 years) leopards, and about 200 primates.”

Former WAO vice-president and treasurer (and recent volunteer) Kristina Brunner expects the worst. “It looks like the Cryers decided it was too much work to save the WAO, so they have thrown in the towel,” she wrote in an email. “My heart is completely broken over this.”

Not so fast, cat lady. According to Rob Mitchell, listed as “community relations” man for WAO, the orphanage is alive and, uh, well. “Are we closing? Not that I know of,” Mitchell told the Current on Friday. The search for new homes is “a normal function,” he said. “That happens all the time. We’re not shutting down.”

It happens all the time? Really? The 280 animals in need of homes represent more than half of the “approximately 400 animals” WAO claims in its website. Not even at the lowest point during the Asvestas’s era did the orphanage attempt such a massive animal exodus.

Got an AZA-certified playground that’ll hold a couple hundred primates, give a shout. The Cryers insist they’re just in a stretch of serious reorganization. Time will tell. •