Yes, absolutely. I’ve gotten tagged in this post a ton of times (not a bad thing!) so let’s take a look at it. This story is a prime example of how clickbait news sites perpetuate really dangerous interactions with animals as cute.
I’m just gonna burst the bubble on this: Messi is not a rescue. Messi is an exotic pet - and one being managed in a very dangerous, irresponsible way. Period, full stop.
Messi was one of three cougar cubs born at the Saransk city zoo in Russia, and involved in some sort of soccer fandom event. When it was over, all three cubs were given to the local “contact” zoo, wherever they were in Russia (I still haven’t been able to track down that facility’s name). The owners went to the zoo, saw the cub, and in their own words “decided they had to have him.” After thinking about it for a few days, they went back to the zoo and convinced them to let them purchase the cub. For whatever reason - whether Messi was sickly and they didn’t want to deal with it, as they say, or simply because it was profitable - the zoo sold them this cougar. Exotic pets are common in Russia, and they have to come from somewhere, so I’m really not surprised that a zoo would be willing to sell one of their animals if someone was really willing to pay. That is not rescue. No matter how they or the media try to frame it, these people literally went “I want one” because cougar cubs are cute, and then followed through on it by buying him.
There’s a whole bunch more in the IG thread they’ve posted about his history, but I’m not going to bother embedding the screenshots. Basically, it says: he was super sick and needed a lot of medical attention, they made their house nice for him, and then they started taking him to group dog training classes, and he can’t be released because of his health issues. Let’s break that down.
Yes, it’s imaginable he was really sick when they got him. The images I’ve seen of the cubs when they were first brought in for the promotion show very, very young animals that are no longer with their mother. According to the posts by the owner, Messi has had issues with underdeveloped cartilage, bone density, and other indicatiors of malnutrition; you can see in photos how messed up Messi’s conformation is even now. I genuinely don’t know if the zoo would have kept him alive with those health issues or if they intended to euthanize him, but it’s really important here to note that the zoo was not looking to rehome Messi to someone who would care for him - he was simply lucky that this couple decided they wanted a pet and offered to buy him.
The way he’s being managed is utterly irresponsible and is setting them up for a tragedy. Yes, they built a lovely indoor setup for him that most domestic housecats would love - but Messi is still a wild animal with wild instincts, and allowing him to free-roam in a house with people and interact (even on a leash!) with small animals is dangerous. Remember that spreadsheet of all the maulings and deaths caused by pet big cats in the US I’ve got? Cougars are the second-most common species for involvement in incidents. He may be small for a cougar, but he still has claws and teeth and predatory instincts that no amount of “love” can erase. At some point they will kick in, and either a person or another animal will get hurt.
Yeah, that screenshot looks like a totally positive interaction between Messi and the housecat. Notice there’s small dog that’s running around unrestrained at the bottom right during the interaction.
My biggest issue with this whole thing is the way they take him out in public. If they want to endanger themselves and their pets, that’s one thing. But what they choose to do with this cat in public is dangerous and irresponsible. It angers me no end that it’s being lauded as super-cute by so many American media outlets when - if you did anything similar with any big cat in the United States - it would either be illegal or you’d be facing some serious problems with regards to public endangerment. I guess it’s cute when it’s in another country that we don’t feel the need to hold responsible for their animal management practices, right?
One, they take this cat out in public all the time. They don’t secure it when driving (good luck not getting mauled if you’re in an accident and the cat is in pain / escapes), they walk it into pet stores like it’s a domestic animal (and just have to hope it doesn’t go after any of the other pets?), and they take him to fucking group dog training classes. In the extended history that I didn’t bother to screenshot all of, they tell basically this story: they couldn’t find anyone who had ever worked with cougar, so they went to this one guy who had worked with a bobcat once, and then they started taking him to group dog training classes after a while. I’m sorry, but are they actively trying to get other people’s pets killed?? Predatory drift is real, and being in a small enclosed space with a lot of other small animals whose behavior is unpredictable is a great way to set that cat up for failure. Everything they’re doing with that cat is just so stupid and irresponsible I can’t even with it.
Lastly, the claim he can’t go “back to the wild” because of his size is bullshit. That cat can’t be released into the wild because a) cougar are not native to Russia and b) he’s been hand-raised, used for promotional material, tamed, and kept as a housecat. It’s not probable that he even knows how to hunt, and if he was somehow released into the US, he’d turn into a nuisance animal - one that seeks out humans for resources and/or companionship - almost immediately.
The way Messi is being kept goes against every scientifically-backed standard for responsible big cat management. (I can tell you with pretty decent surety that even the people I know who have circus or private non-professional big cat ownership backgrounds would think it’s inappropriate and dangerous. I know it goes against the standards and best practices of even those professional institutions that do allow things like free contact work with big cats). Just because it looks cute does not mean it is safe or an appropriate way to interact with an exotic animal. I’m not kidding that, if you tried even a fraction of what they do with Messi in the US - even just admitting that you have a pet cougar you’re free contact with in a state where that’s legal - the harassment, protesting, and potential lawsuits wouldn’t end until that cat was removed. However, slap a “rescue” label on the situation, put a bunch of cute photos online, and suddenly the internet decides that all welfare and safety concerns somehow no longer apply. So much so that his story is being shared by sites like OneGreenPlanet, which are rabidly against animals being cared for professionally in zoos but apparently fine with people having exotic pets. After all, Messi is now famous on IG and Youtube, and I’m sure his owners are cashing in on his popularity: until someone gets injured or killed because of his owner’s management practices, the groups writing feature articles about Messi don’t have to think critically about what they’re promoting because the word “rescue” is involved. I just feel really bad for the people who will, inevitably, try to emulate Messi’s owners and set themselves up for a tragedy.
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