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Port Richey Woman Befriended Big Cats

Cheryl Bentley/SUNCOAST NEWS

Jane Roylance Smith's Port Richey home is decorated with pictures of big cats. Smith formerly was a frequent visitor at Savage Kingdom, in Center Hill, where she formed friendships with feline residents.

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By Cheryl  Bentley | The Suncoast News

Published: January 9, 2008

A baby lion with a toothache cast a spell over Jane Roylance Smith.

At a zoo near London during World War II, through her father's friendship with zoo personnel, she was allowed to bottle feed the cub as a child. He wouldn't eat on his own because of the bad tooth.

"That was the start of my love affair with animals," she recalls in her English accents as she sits in the living room of her Port Richey home that is decorated with big-cat themed art and photos.

That love affair would eventually lead to close-up and personal contacts with other large cats, including tigers and snow leopards, at Savage Kingdom in Center Hill in Sumter County. Smith began visiting it regularly in 1996.

Savage Kingdom, a big cat rescue and breeding facility, was the creation of Robert Baudy, a native of France.

During his 30 years in business, Baudy drew fire from animal lovers for his sale of big cats to both individuals and circuses and other businesses that kept in cramped cages animals who in the wild can roam 100 miles a day.

Baudy's Central Florida facility was shut down in July 2006 by a federal judge acting on a request from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for violation of the Animal Welfare Act.

In a 2001 incident, a volunteer working at Baudy's exotic animal park sustained fatal neck and head injuries when a 500-pound male tiger crashed through a rusted section of fencing and attacked the man. The tiger was shot and killed.

Today, Baudy is in his 80s in frail health, says Smith.

Smith, a retired announcer and script writer for the British Broadcasting Corp., acknowledges Baudy's shortcomings. But, she says, breeding big cats is necessary to continue the species.

She points to statistics such as those from the World Wildlife Fund indicating the number of wild tigers has dwindled to no more than 5,000 worldwide.

That is the same number of tigers estimated to be in private hands, along with up to 10,000 other big cats.

Although they may play a role in preserving their species, these cats often lead miserable lives, according to the Humane Society of the United States.

"Most other captive big cats live in often deplorable circumstances in roadside exhibits, traveling shows, pseudo-sanctuaries, basements, barns and backyards," the society reports.

They can also be dangerous, as Tatiana, the escaped tiger from the San Francisco Zoo who killed one human and mauled two others in December, again illustrated.

She has sympathy for the caged animals, Smith says. As the child feeding the lion cub, she decided her mission was to give the animals kindness in their often difficult lives.

"Touching that lion, something came out in me," she remembers. "I didn't want to see it in captivity. I wanted to see it free."

She met Baudy in 1996 when she filmed a documentary about his facility for The Villages Golfing Retirement Community, where she then lived, in Lady Lake, in Lake County.

During her frequent visits to the facility, she often bottle- fed big cat babies. "I had a wonderful experience of holding and feeding and burping these little precious things," she says. "They'd snuggle up to me and purr."

One of those babies was Nikki, a white tiger now at Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa.

With her grandchildren, Smith visited Nikki in 2007. Because of her prior relationship with the animal, she was allowed to accompany the keeper to see Nikki at closer range than is allowed for the general public.

"She came right up to me and started purring," she remembers and laughs. "She was purring so loud."

Nikki had a good memory. The last time she had seen Smith was in 2003.

She had no fear of the grown cats, Smith reports, but was never without a trainer when with an uncaged animal. "I was careful. But I wasn't afraid."

With the exception of one time, when a tiger swatted her boot-clad leg, she never had dangerous incidents with the animals.

The boot kept Smith from being harmed. In hindsight, she feels the animal was reacting to an open sore under the boot.

In addition to tigers, she interacted with snow leopards, who, she says are the most affectionate of the big cats, and Shawnee, a puma.

"I'd walk out and say, 'Shawnee, good morning,' and he would meow."

What did she learn from the animals? "I think I learned what it must feel like if you're a prisoner behind bars, and you don't have judge and jury. They have no idea why they are there, whereas someone in jail knows why they are there."

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