Colorado Vacation - Day 7

We woke up early our final day of vacation to get to the big cat farm by 9:00 a.m. Serenity Springs is a sanctuary to almost 120 big cats located in Calhan, CO, which is out in the middle of nowhere. I just happened to come across this place while planning our vacation and once I looked at their website, was convinced we needed to do what we could so that Sammy could see it. It meant adding an extra day to our vacation, because they only give tours on the weekend, but I think it was well worth it. Most of the cats here are rescues, but some had interesting stories of how they arrived. Some were famous before having to retire here and some actually were raised as house pets!

I didn't get very great pics because we had to stand at lease 3 feet back, especially the children. Our guide told us that the cats might try to "stalk" the kids if they got too close. Also, there is a danger of being "sprayed", just like a house cat would do. Disgusting!

A black leopard - in the sunlight you could see his spots.


Pharaoh the lion - he was movie star at one time. He was Samuel's favorite big cat.

This bengal tiger liked to play a game w/ the workers and pretend he was stalking them. It is amazing how quiet and agile they are.

This mountain lion was raised as a house pet. I'm not sure what people are thinking when they buy one of these for pets.

I believe Samuel said this was a Caracal. There were two in this cage and they had their eyes on Sophie. She was just the right height and they acted like they would pounce on her at any second!

The only lioness they had. They said she sleeps up to 20 hours a day.

A Vegas tiger.

This guy was a little scary because he was crouched down in the grass just watching us.

This was one of the 4 white tigers that had to be taken away from Mike Tyson. He would buy them and use them as sparring partners! By the way, they keep size 16 bowling balls in their pins as toys for them to play with. They throw these the balls around like they are styrofoam or something. If the balls were smaller, they would be able to crush them in their mouth!

These animals were donated to the sanctuary:

We left the sanctuary at about 10:30 or so and got back to Broken Arrow around 10:00 p.m. It was a long trip, but we all had a great time!