Dozens of big cats rescued by Smarden sanctuary

The 28 that needed rehoming include the UK's only Asian Golden Cat.

Transcript

00:00The Big Cat Sanctuary in Smardon has given a new home to two big cats and supported 26

00:05others, after a Hertfordshire Animal Trust director was found guilty of causing his animals

00:10to suffer.

00:12When Hertfordshire police visited the Cat Survival Trust in 2022, they found multiple

00:17animals with diseases and others which had been deceased in the site's freezer, so they

00:21began a long investigation that eventually led to the director, Terence Moore's conviction.

00:27Now the Big Cat Sanctuary, working with its sister zoo Hertfordshire, are working with

00:31the police, local authorities and vet teams to re-home and take care of the 28 rare and

00:36endangered cats in their biggest rescue operation to date.

00:41With this particular case, I mean it's a huge, huge re-homing operation of 28 cats that are

00:46on the site, all with different health issues and problems as well, so it's been a huge

00:51task but I mean our teams have been absolutely brilliant, we've worked night and day to obviously

00:57get the facilities, make the facilities better for the cats that were on the site but also

01:02finding all of these homes and working with brilliant, you know, good zoos, good sanctuaries

01:06and good rescue centres and places that are able to take the cats on.

01:10The process was a long one and included getting the cats onto the right diet, cleaning the

01:15enclosures, making sure they were medically healthy and distributing the details out to

01:20different sanctuaries and zoos.

01:22This modern sanctuary did take a couple of animals of their own of course, Frank, the

01:26UK's only Asian golden cat and Bosun, the fishing cat.

01:30In Frank's case, he's part of an endangered species.

01:33He's such a rare species, it was quite an exciting moment when obviously we were given

01:38the opportunity to rescue him from the Cat Survivor Trust and bring him to the Big Cat

01:43Sanctuary so we're going to be conducting quite a bit of research because little is

01:48known about the Asian golden cats.

01:50The efforts to re-home the 28 cats is reportedly going well, with many already off-site and

01:55others soon to find their forever homes.

01:58Bartholomew Hall for KMTV.