Big Cat Habitat and Gulf Coast Sanctuary

At Big Cat Habitat and Gulf Coast Sanctuary, they save the best for last.

After the trained dogs have cleared their hurdles, after the grinning chimpanzee and the cockatoo and the miniature horse and the slapstick bears have paraded back to their cages, the tigers take the floor.

The big beasts enter the 14-foot-high show cage one by one, through a small doorway, and they shamble smooth as molasses to their appointed roosts. The biggest, Conan, is simply a monster.

At 700 pounds, the Bengal tiger is twice the size of Tatiana, the notorious San Francisco Zoo tiger cut down in a hail of police gunfire after fatally mauling a tourist on Christmas Day. Conan is joined by four others, most notably Samson, the 550-pound white Bengal with the ice-blue eyes.

A couple of hundred people have gathered this Saturday afternoon in the chairs and bleachers beneath the tin-paneled arena. There are babies and geriatrics and everyone in between, all of whom have been momentarily reduced to children by the hypnotic kings of the food chain.

The creatures are led through their paces by unarmed, 27-year-old Clayton Rosaire, heir to the famed circus dynasty. He tells his audience he has known them since they were cubs. He does not tell them the carnivores here have sent him to the hospital four times. That story comes after the house clears.The animals hit their marks flawlessly, more like dogs than house cats. They leap over one another, they rear up on their haunches, they tower like Lipizzaners above Rosaire, they backpedal upright. In comic contrast, Conan, supine, follows verbal cues and interrupts Rosaire's patter with precision swats of the tail.

Under the guidance of Clayto Rosaire, the menagerie continues to tour, mostly during the summer.Until then, local two-hour shows are open to the public on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at the 30-acre compound off Palmer Boulevard east of Interstate 75. But Big Cat Habitat is not a zoo, nor does it have a breeding program.In 1987, the Rosaires turned it into a nonprofit sanctuary for animal rejects and castoffs; today, the inventory includes 32 lions and tigers, a dozen bears, emus, large land tortoises and exotic birds. Although the Rosaire animals were born and raised in captivity, no amount of familiarity can fully eradicate feral instincts, like the stalking and pouncing impulses common among house cats.

But there is a major difference.

"Getting bit by a tiger is worse than getting shot or stabbed, because there's so much pressure or force behind it," recalls Clayton Rosaire, who was once bitten on the top of the head while trying to break up a tiger tussle. "It's like getting hit by a car with nails."

Kay Rosaire still bears scars from a live performance in 1991, when a tiger grabbed and dragged her by the hip.

She was saved when a lion intervened and swatted the tiger away.

Eighty-four stitches later, Rosaire says the attack was not malicious, and calls it her "only serious accident" since she began doing shows in 1973. She insists the bonding of traditional circus animals with humans is no different from domestic cats and dogs.

"It's totally emotional," she says. "They express themselves physically. Chimps groom you, and cats lick you. They all want your attention, just like children, and when you spend time working with them, the bond becomes stronger. My father called it teaching, not training."

Clayton Rosaire, who has been on the receiving end of a tiger bite calibrated by experts at roughly 1,500 pounds of pressure per square inch, is under no illusions. He says tigers are stimulated by regular interaction with humans, which explains why they obey commands. Some of them, anyway.

"They all have individual personalities. You have to watch their behaviors and see what they like to do and what they don't like to do," says Rosaire. "They're very smart animals. And they read you just like you read them.

Source: Billy Cox

"INTERESTED?The Big Cat Habitat & Gulf Coast Sanctuary is not primarily a public attraction, but it does hold performances most weekends while the show is not touring during the summer. More information: 371- 6377