Turn your back on Cat Fancy magazine!
Cat Fancy magazine slams exotic cats as pets again...
The November 2007 issue of Cat Fancy has an article featuring Tippi Hedren and her anti-private-ownership-of-exotic-cats activism, that was written by Cat Fancy's own Lindsay Hanks.
From time to time Cat Fancy does a cover story on bengal or savannah cats. They'll use a picture of a beautiful bengal or savannah on the cover and include a centerfold photo of one so they can sell more copies of their magazine. But then their editorial policy supports anything and everything that will mean the end of private ownership of the servals and Asian leopard cats that are necessary to create the foundation generations of those exciting breeds.
Hedren can hardly hold herself up as a picture-perfect example of a responsible exotic cat owner. Anyone who reads her book will be told--in her own words--about the numerous (and self-confessed) illegal activities she did with her own exotic cats when she was acquiring them for her movie.
Cat Fancy has been reported to remove references to early-generation cats from breeders' ads. Look for yourself. Just try to find a bengal or savannah breeder ad in Cat Fancy magazine that even mentions F1- or F2-generation cats...or has any mention of "foundation" cats in it. You won't find any. (It appears that Cat Fancy doesn't believe in freedom of speech--even if you're paying to say something...)
If Cat Fancy's editorial policy ever becomes public policy across the country, there will be no more captive wild cats of any size or kind, and no more savannah cats or other hybrids except for (possibly) bengals. (And only them, because there might be enough bengals with a diverse-enough gene pool to be able to maintain the breed.) Cat Fancy is widely-read among cat people, and their editorial slant does affect the attitudes of many people across the country.
The epidemic of new bans on private exotic cat ownership across the country is being fanned and fueled by media hype--like this latest article in Cat Fancy. It is extremely bad for responsible exotic cat owners fighting to preserve the right to keep their beloved pets when a national magazine like Cat Fancy promotes and glorifies extremist activism of the likes of Tippi Hedren. Articles like this in the media tend to make people to think in black-and-white, stereotyped terms, instead of opening any kind of intelligent dialog about what the issues and facts really are.
Besides offering only a one-sided, stereo-typed view of the issue of private exotic cat ownership, there are some factual errors in the article that Ms. Hanks could easily have caught if she'd only read Tippi Hedren's own book The Cats of Shambala [revised, 1992]. Or are Ms. Hanks and Ms. Hedren trying to rewrite history? Decide for yourself.
Factual error #1
Hanks quotes Hedren in the Cat Fancy (Nov 2007) article "Hear Her Roar" :
"I was never afraid of the birds in the movie. Not once." (regarding her role in Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds)
But Hedren stated in her book:
"Seventeen live pecking gulls and ravens were tied to me in an attic scene, and afterwards I went to bed for four days, on doctor's orders, there to fight off nightmares filled with flapping wings and bloody beaks. So I well knew, firsthand, about nonhuman actors and actresses."
Factual error #2
Hanks quotes Hedren in the Cat Fancy (Nov 2007) article "Hear Her Roar" :
"Environmentalists were warning the public about the diminishing numbers of many wild species including tigers, pandas, and whales. In response, Hedren and her then-husband, a film producer, decided to make a movie about the problems wild animals faced because of poaching and encroaching civiization."
But in her book, The Cats of Shambala, Hedren paints a very different picture of what motivated them to make the movie.
There are several places where Hedren discusses the point in time when the idea of making the film first dawns on her and her husband, and then the process of refining and developing the ideas--
"...we heard the bus guide say that the largest pride of lions in all Africa lived in the old house, a game warden's residence until it was flooded out. Lions were all over the place...Unable to take our eyes off that house and all those lions...Finally we turned away. And as we were climbing back into the car Noel said, "You know, we ought to make a picture about this." (This group of lions is the Gorongosa pride pride referenced later.)
"Others had made documentaries about the big cats. But that was not the idea we had in mind. We wanted to tell a human story. And our short stay in the Serengeti led to many "what if" conversations: what if the game warden came back to that abandoned house?..."
"Now clearly talking ourselves into making a picture, we spoke endlessly to friends and business contacts about the funny Gorongosa pride. The lion in the rocking chair. The two in the swing. About putting that whole pride up on sixty-foot international screens."
"We also hoped to show the possibilities of human--big-cat relationships in an entertaining way..."
"The Exorcist would soon become intertwined with our hopes and plans to make the lion film...With luck at the box office, those priests and demons would pay for a lot of big-cat cavorting."
"We had decided, too, that the film "Lions" was to be both entertainment and a plea for protection of wildlife throughout the world."
The above passages in The Cats of Shambala all seem to indicate that wanting to plead a case for the conservation of wild animals was definitely not the primary motivation for wanting to make the movie, and, in fact, was mostly an after-thought. A way to justify their desire to make a movie with lions in it, that they had already decided to make. But the the Cat Fancy article gives the impression that the primary--if not the sole--reason for making the movie was to promote conservation. A very different impression from that left after reading Hedren's own book.
Which version of history is correct, Cat Fancy's or Ms. Hedren's own account from 1992?
Another fly in the ointment...
There's also a bit of an issue with the logical position Tippi Hedren places herself into with her rhetoric. She does not want any exotic cats in captivity as "pets." But she does not explain how owning them herself is any different than any other individual who takes proper care of their exotic cat "pet" for its entire life.
The only difference between Tippi Hedren owning a tiger (for example) and you or I (if we had the money to properly house and care for one, had the specialized knowledge for it, and were totally committed to taking care of it for its entire life) is that she has set up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, tax-exempt, charitable organization for income tax purposes. That means that she can milk people for as much money in donations as they'll tolerate, and not have to pay taxes on any of it. And Shambala's website has plenty of places asking for money--it's as easy to find a place to spend money on that site as it is on any for-profit site.
It sounds like the anti-pet legislation she supports is only to keep everyone else but her from being able to have anything to do with any of these cats. Perhaps she could explain that to us? Surely it's not because she's a more responsible exotic cat owner than anyone else in the country...
Hedren can hardly hold herself up as a picture-perfect example of a responsible exotic cat owner. Anyone who reads her book will be told--in her own words--about the numerous (and self-confessed) illegal things she did with her own exotic cats when she was acquiring them for her movie.
Some examples--
"...and heavily trafficked Ventura Boulevard was less than a quarter mile away, we had a perfect hideaway for the study of lions. Or so we thought. Although cheetahs were legal, with necessary permits, other big cats were definitely not welcom within city limits. We knew that..." [She was keeping lions, which were illegal to keep there.]
"Still, over the next months and years, it seemed at times as if we were running an unruly orphanage, an illegal home zoo."
"During daylight we kept the cubs outside as much as possible, hoping the neighbors wouldn't discover what kind of house we were keeping."
And then (in her book) Hedren describes in detail what happened when an animal control officer came to her house in response to one of her neighbors having called-in a complaint after two of her lions had peered over the fence into the neighbor's yard. Tippi and Melanie "spirited" four of the juvenile lions over their backyard fence, while her then-husband (Noel) took the youngest cub to the door, implying to the officer that they only had just that one very small cub.
And this is the woman who Lindsay Hanks admiringly describes as "...at the forefront of exotic feline rescue in the United States.". Susan Logan (Cat Fancy's Editor) called Ms. Hedren "...an excellent role model for all animal lovers." We all need to write letters to Cat Fancy magazine and their advertisers to make them stop printing this one-sided propaganda...
