JACKSONVILLE, Fla — Ready to hear a roar and save some money? Your family with young children gets a discount the month of November at Catty Shack Ranch!
A regular paying adult can bring two kids up to 11 years old for free this month. Catty Shack Ranch hosted Good Morning Jacksonville On The Road Friday to check out the wild animals.
When your family gets there, if your first instinct is to call the big cats "kitty," think again.
"Are you a good boy? You're such a good boy!" said Ron Wudarczyk to Abu the African lion as Abu rubbed against the fence.
This may sound like a pet owner talking to his little furry guy, but they say it pretty often here that the animals at Catty Shack Ranch are not pets.
"They'll get between 15 and 20 pounds of meat a night," Wudarczyk said.
Does your pet eat that much meat? First Coast News got to meet Abu and Rosa, the African lions, for treat time as well as feed some lions live on GMJ.
All of the animals here are born in captivity.
"We got him from a place down south that had three male lions and they weren't getting along so they asked us to take one of them," Wudarczyk said about Abu. "We're so glad we got him because he's such a good boy."
Wudarczyk says sometimes birds of prey will land in the lions' territory to try to get the chicken they eat and the lions will "play" with the birds, but won't eat them.
"They don't eat anything with fur or feathers," he said. "They don't realize that it's food. So a lot of people say, 'You know why can't these animals be released out into the wild?' None of them have ever been in the wild. They were all born in captivity. They don't have the hunting skills and everything. They'd be sitting there at 7:30 every night waiting for someone to bring them their dinner."
Wudarczyk says the animals at Catty Shack Ranch live longer than those in the wild.
"In the wild they live maybe eight to 12 years or something like that," he said. "In captivity we've had them up into the 20s."
The big cat friends of Wudarczyk, who used to be an engineer but found his passion caring for wildlife, has some big cat friends that could accidentally take off a limb, but his workdays are priceless.
"You can't be in a bad mood out here," Wudarczyk said. "You come in in the morning and have 400, 500-pound tigers and a 600-pound lion chuffing at you and greeting you and being happy to see you. You can't beat that feeling"