Update on the little girl (that's her with me on 6/6/04 below.) She's putting on weight well and very full of herself. She'll still need surgery on her mouth when she gets a bit older.
She is absolutely breathtaking! What a stunning girl! I have to know...I've always wondered about what they feel like to pet...Does their fur feel like a domestic cat's or is it more coarse? I know, silly question, but I've always wondered about that!
She weighs about 20 lbs at the moment, she gets weighed every day as part of her progress review, but I haven't looked to get the exact number.
Tigers purr? Depends on who you ask. Generally large cats are not considered to purr, but tigers do "chuffle" and make some other soft noises, which some consider to actually be purring. They only make this noise on their exhale, while domestic cats purr on both the inhale and exhale.
I'm not the one that did the real work for this girl. There's a whole group of people involved, and others in the group really put in the huge effort day in and day out to bring her along. They really deserve the credit for this one. I've patched up, sat up with, hand fed, soothed, etc. quite a few critters, but I would be kidding myself to try and claim any credit for this little girl. I've fed her a few times but that's about it.
To me tiger fur is sort of soft and course at the same time, depends on where you touch and which tiger you're talking about, though not as course as lion fur seems to be. In all reality it's not much different than many other big animals, though the fur on my house cats (all 9 of them) does seem softer. One thing I did noticed with the big cats is the power in the underlying muscles seems very obvious.