Exotic Feline Rescue Center

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2024

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Long before Joe Exotic got the country talking about big cats, there was Joe Taft – regular guy – who began raising and rescuing these types of felines in Indiana. MORE: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/exotic-feline-rescue-center-2

Transcript

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0:00.0	Remember the Netflix show Tiger King?
0:04.0	The guy that felt Tiger King came out here and film for a day and then said,
0:09.0	you're not crazy enough to be in my movie?
0:12.0	Joe Exotic, the most famous of the guys featured in Tiger King
0:15.2	is more of a caricature of life with big cats.
0:17.9	In Centerpoint, Indiana, a small farm town of about 200 people,
0:22.1	there's a different Joe.
0:23.0	Joe Taft.
0:25.0	Yeah, I don't want to call myself Tiger Tang either, but yeah, I'm the guy that was serious about it.
0:31.0	Joe Taft is the owner of the Ex feline rescue center, a 260 acre government licensed home for our large
0:37.8	feline friends.
0:40.0	We have about 140 animals here right now.
0:43.7	We have of course lions and tigers, leopards both black and spotted.
0:48.3	Cougars, we have bobcats and lynxes. Over the years we have had well over 500 lions and tigers here.
1:00.0	Joe Taft isn't nearly as flamboyant as the folks in Tiger King.
1:03.8	He's a soft-spoken man, but he does have a big heart for big cats. My name is Baudelaire and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world strange, incredible, and
1:22.2	and wondrous places.
1:23.8	Today we go to Center Point, Indiana to the exotic Feline Rescue Center
1:27.7	to hear the story of how Joe Taft went from having a couple of
1:30.6	Feline friends to hundreds of them.
1:34.0	More after this. Oh, you know, you're going to be.
1:43.0	You're going to be
	...

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