TheFurFiles

My son’s best friend says he wants to get a tiger for a pet. It is more of a dream really, because he knows he can’t – it wouldn’t be right. He’d like too though, which means we’ve had this conversation…

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Ten Reasons Why Tigers Make Really Bad Pets…

1. In order to house them properly, you’d have to have a really big yard, and I mean BIG – like up to 4000 square kilometers of grassland and/or forested area. I don’t know about you, but our fifty by seventy-five foot lot just wouldn’t cut it.

2. The biggest subspecies – the Siberian tiger – can be almost four feet tall at the shoulders, nine feet long, and weigh more than six hundred and fifty pounds. It would easily take up the entire couch and/or bed. And my husband says our little cats are the reason why – on some mornings – he finds himself curled in the fetal position on the floor holding just a pillow. Poor baby.

Source: petadvice.com.

3. Tiger cubs are really cute, like what baby animals aren’t? But then they grow into killers.

4. When your cat scratches you, it hurts like someone has sliced you open with a small paring knife or the edge of a piece of paper. Imagine a tiger scratching you? It’s be like having your eyeballs removed with a machete.

5. Tigers eat a lot, and they are NOT scavengers, which means they only eat what they kill. I know for a fact that Loblaws doesn’t carry “live antelope, deer, boars, or yaks”, and neither does the really expensive pet store here in town, although they seem to sell everything else.  Can you say Kitty Wigs?

6. Cats shed. Ipso facto, tigers shed a LOT. You might as well forget about the lint brush, and just say that your sweat/coat/pants came that way.

7. Sure, tigers are beautiful, mystical creatures, but they can also disembowel a person in about twenty seconds flat.

8. Even happy tigers can do some serious damage. Imagine being “pounced on” as you walk in the front door from a long day at the office in your wool suit and heels. So much for the suit…and your face.

9. A 66-year-old man in southwestern Ontario was killed by the tiger he had owned for years, this just after he had won a long legal battle to keep it. We could all learn from such an idiot.

10. Don’t even get me started on tiger poop or barf.

Case closed, Dustin. We’ll get you a gerbil.