Tiger Time by Kama Einhorn

Author:Kama Einhorn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

Tiger Treatment

Recovery isn’t just about eating meat; it’s also about veterinary care. Our vets specialize in big animals. There’s a university near here with big-cat experts, and they come to the clinic at least once a week to take care of us. Big cats usually arrive with two big problems.

One is our enormous paws. Most of us were declawed before we got to this sanctuary. It makes us less dangerous to humans, but it really messes us up—it’s like a human losing the first section of a finger. After all, we’re meant to use our claws to hunt and defend ourselves, and even if we don’t need to do those things here, not having claws feels deeply wrong to us. Plus being declawed hurts (and if the operation hasn’t been done properly, our paws keep hurting, so some of us stay on pain medication our whole lives.) Being declawed also damages our balance, so it can hurt our leg bones.

The other problem is our teeth. Obviously, we are born with teeth that become giant, impressive fangs. But humans have either filed them down (for the same reasons they declaw us), or we’ve been so stressed out in our cages that we’ve used them to bite and pull at the bars.

Because our teeth are infected and painful, we need root canal therapy (most adult humans cringe at these words!). We can also get gum disease from bad nutrition and no vet care. We can’t eat meat without them.

Even if they fed us pureed meat like you’d feed to a housecat, it’s psychologically bad for us to have no teeth (just like it is to have no claws). And physically our teeth are more important to us than humans’ are to them. When we lose our teeth, our jawbones get weak, so our skulls do too.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.