Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is time now for our community connection. We have Cheryl King with us here with the Turpentine Wildlife Refuge, and my goodness sakes, we have a big day coming up here on Giving Tuesday, Cheryl. But we're going to get to that a little bit. For the folks who don't know a whole lot about Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, give us a little synopsis here.
Absolutely, Good morning, Tom, and thank you. Yes. Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, located just south of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, on Highway twenty three, has been rescuing large exotic cats. Our mission is to provide sank lifetime refuge specifically my apologies specifically for lions, tigers, leopards, cougars, but really we have all types of exotic cats here. We've got servs and bobcats, so we've got the smaller cats and then we've got the big guys too. We rescue them from abuse, neglect,
or abandonment. Many are relinquished by owners that come to realize these are predators, not pets. You know, you start out with a cute, cuddly little tiger cub and two years later he's four hundred and fifty pounds and you're terrified of feeding. So what do you do? You reach out to Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge and we provide a lifetime home for them.
You've have some celebrity cats too.
I understand, yes, we do. I suppose we've all heard of Tiger King. We have, we have, indeed, and we've got you know, we've traced history on a good many of our cats, and we took in twenty one total from Kim Stark, Jeff and Lauren Lowe. They were all players in that drama. But we have traced genesis of over sixty of our cats back to Joe Exotic and the Greater Winnwood Park and the cub petting that they were doing there.
Oh my goodness, sakes, it's a it's an interesting that you come to the rescue of these these lovely creatures you just really need a place to be themselves exactly.
You know how it all started, Tom was with that cub petting. After the cubs get to a certain size, and that's at about four months if they underfeed them usually typically it's a three month the cats become too big to work, you know, interact with the public. Even if you declall them, they still have those canines a powerful bite, so it's no longer safe. And then they
just become something that you need to feed. There's very little value once they are pulled out of that cub petting well, the major money is raided.
Wow, and this is what you do. You give them a great life and they get to at instead of just merely surviving. That's beautiful, exactly one.
Of the joys. These cats often come in quite traumatized. They are very fearful of people. They tend to display some aggression or they may become withdrawn and you know, be seeking isolation. And over time we get to see them become what they were meant to be. They understand they're safe, they're not being forced into situations they're not comfortable in, and we just get to see them become the apex predators they should be. You know. Unfortunately they are in a cage. There is no way they can
ever be rehabilitated into the wild. They would be a danger to people and they would likely not have the skills to survive anyway.
We're talking with Cheryl Kingsy's with Turputine Greek Wildlife Refuge, and you know, when you have critters with that kind of appetit, that can't be.
Cheap, No, sir, it certainly isn't. We're feeding something like five hundred to six hundred pounds of meat a week. You know what the cost of meat is these days. And this is a great time to say, we really want to send a shout out to Tyson. They donate a lot of the meat that we feed the cats. We get a lot of chicken donated from them.
And of course, so when it comes to the upkeep and maintaining the refuge itself are those We do have a lot of people who come and visit the park and they make their donation and ticket purchases and everything else like that. But on top of that, they're just cost it just kind of kind of have a tendency to grow as time goes by. Nothing is cheap these days. We've got Giving Tuesday coming up. Is that something that folks could possibly use as a way to say, yep, I'm going to write a check.
Absolutely, it's so critical to us. We're moving into the winter months and you talked about visitors, those tend to drop off over the winter months when it's so cold out. It's a great time to visit the refuge if you don't mind being a little cold. Tigers love the cold weather. They're going to be out more active. But we do see a decline in visitors during this period and it
makes it tough to get through those winter months. And giving Tuesday is just a huge way for us to be able to plan and to make it through the spring and make sure that we're meeting all the needs of the animals.
Now, folks who are interested in making that gift, that donation, A lot of people look at the year end is a time where they make decisions. Some actually look for new places in order to donate. How do they get a hold of the Wildlife Refuge, the Tern Creek folks, and how do they get the ball rolling?
Yes, sir, so, a couple of exciting things to begin with. The huck Family has stepped up this year to initiate a sixty thousand dollars Family Match Challenge, So for every dollar that donors are able to contribute, so first of all, they're all tax deductible as a nonprofit. Year donation to the Refuge can be claimed on your taxes as a donation as a deduction, and we will be able to
double dollar for dollar up to sixty thousand. Our goal this year is one hundred and twenty thousand, So you know, follow us on Facebook, come out and you'll be able to find the link to give b which is where you can do your online donation and it will be tracked across all Giving Tuesday donations and so you can go there and you can register. And we're also going to have an evening event that night tom at seven
pm Central. We're going to be premiering a legacy, Robbie's Legacy, a documentary film about one of our tigers and the cause that we're raising money for this year.
Well, that is going to be great and folks, you don't want to miss that either. And you know, when you talk about the work that you're doing there and the work you have with your staff and with your volunteers, you know, just on behalf of animal lovers everywhere, we say thank you because you know, you see what folks kind of get into. They really don't know what they have until it grows on them a little bit. And now you know, you got these great big cats and
they need a safe place to go. And thank you very much for providing at the Safety at the Sanctuary, if you will, that refuge for these big cats, so that they can enjoy a good, long, safe life.
Yes, thank you, Tom. We are just thrilled to be doing the evening event. You know, our goal this year is we lost our tiger Robbie to a tickborn illness. You know, we're all familiar with that here in Oklahoma, Arkansas. Ticks are just a bane of our life in the country here, and unfortunately they can be carriers of bobcat fever, and so for those of you at home that have domestic cats, you'll be very interested in this There. We're going to be talking about Provecto, which is a tick
prevention medication, and we'll be going through Robbie's legacy. Unfortunately, he did contract zytoxinosis, which is bobcat fever, and he did pass away. So our goal this year is to treat every animal here at the Refuge with tick preventative medicine. It's quite expensive and you'll be able to learn all about that at the event on Tuesday, December third at seven pm.
All Right, folks, make sure you tune in for that. You don't want to miss it. And you know it's kind of bittersweet. You got the beautiful cat and you know what happens. But moving forward, we know how to preserve our cats going ahead. But the exactly this is going to be one, it's going to tug at you a little bit, but it's going to be okay, And I want you folks to tune in and get yourself
a little bit of an education on that. Now you have a Facebook and you do have your website that's available, and I got to tell you, once you get on the website, it's pretty easy to navigate. So if you're not too good with a computer like yours, truly here, you can still get around on there point clicking, it'll take you where you need to go. You're not going to get lost. You're not going to go down a hole. It's where am I. So hats off to your folks who took care of that.
Thank you. And you know what, it's pretty exciting. If you donate, you're going to be entered into drawings. Throughout the day. We're going to be giving away some behind the scenes tours our Carnivore caravan tour very popular, along with maybe some pall print paintings, some big cat call out vouchers. So every donation you're entered for an opportunity to win a fun.
Prize, Well you're just pulling out all the stops, miss Cheryl.
Well we want to give back when you give to us, in whatever capacity we can.
All right, Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge, Thank you very much one of Oh do we miss anything, Cheryl? Is there something we need to add before we go?
I don't think so, but I do want to share our website at www dot Turpentinecreek dot org. Head on over there and check out our Facebook page.
Thank you very much, Cheryl,