Mom, week-old cubs doing just fine

Delilah turned out to be a pretty good mom. The 450-pound Siberian tiger is taking excellent care of her four cubs, which were born one week ago today. That’s welcome news to Debbie Wyche, director of Cat Tales Zoological Park, who is counting on the babies to bring in crowds of people to see the rare felines and help pay the meat bills at the rescue operation north of Spokane.

Delilah is herself an orphan of sorts. She and the cubs’ 700-pound father, Sampson, and their two 2-year-olds, Romeo and Juliet, were rescued from a Lewis County man who had been evicted last winter.

“When they (sheriff’s deputies) went to serve papers, they realized he had four tigers,” said Wyche, who took the Siberian family in at the request of the Lewis County Animal Shelter.

Siberian, or Amur, tigers are critically endangered. There are about 400 left in the wild and 1,000 in captivity worldwide.

Wyche plans to keep at least two of the cubs, which she hopes will breathe new life into the aging Cat Tales population of 45, including eight Bengal tigers.

If Wyche can bear to part with them, the other two cubs likely will go to a zoo or Randy Miller, a Hollywood animal wrangler. It was Miller who landed a role for Shirkon, one of Wyche’s Bengal tigers, in the Ridley Scott film “Gladiator,” starring Russell Crowe.

Although the four cubs have been monitored by video cameras since their birth Nov. 24, so far no one knows whether they will grow up to be actors or actresses, since the Cat Tales staff has left them untouched in the “large-cat birthing den,” which is kept at 42 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The first two weeks are critical. They can’t regulate their body temperatures until 10 days,” said Wyche, adding that the four tiny striped cats appear to be gaining weight.

The cubs, which have yet to be named, can be viewed on a monitor in the park’s gift shop. Barring problems, visitors can see them in person next weekend at Cat Tales, 17020 Newport Highway in Mead.