iger King star Carole Baskin wants to help locate the missing tiger currently roaming the Houston area.
The 59-year-old reality television star’s Big Cat Rescue sanctuary in Tampa, Florida, is offering a $5,000 reward ‘to the person responsible for the immediate, safe hand over of India the Tiger to a sanctuary that is accredited by the Global Federation of Sanctuaries.’
Carole is extremely worried about the creature’s well-being considering ‘the owners of the tiger have shown a serious lack of responsibility so far,’ she told TMZ on Thursday.
She pointed out that whoever turns in the animal must work with law enforcement in order to receive the money.
The efforts must be ‘sufficient to convict both buyer and seller involved in the transfers of the tiger,’ Baskin told the outlet
India would not be coming to her Big Cat Rescue, she added, but another accredited big cat sanctuary that would provide lifetime care.
Carole first garnered attention as one of the subjects of the hit Netflix docuseries in 2020.
On Wednesday, she blasted Texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn as the search has now stretched into its fifth day.
Baskin said the senators are to be blamed for the current caper because they did not sign her Big Cat Public Safety Act last year.
The federal bill, which was passed in the House of Representatives, seeks to prohibit private individuals from owning tigers and other large animals as domestic pets.
Texas state laws currently allow big cats to be kept as pets – although the City of Houston has its own separate rules barring people from doing so.
This has become kind of commonplace in Texas,’ Baskin claimed during an interview with CNN on Wednesday morning.
‘I really hope Sens. Cruz and Cornyn will sign on to the Big Cat Public Safety Act because if they they had last year, when the house passed this bill, this wouldn’t have happened.’
While Baskin has been an advocate for big cats, Tiger King fans took to Twitter after making memes mocking the reality star for weighing in on the new saga in Texas.
The nine-month-old Bengal tiger, named India, has been at large in Houston since Sunday when its alleged owner, Victor Hugo Cuevas, 26, bundled the animal into the back of his white Jeep Cherokee while fleeing from police.
He was caught and arrested, and later released on bond on Wednesday… but there is still no sign of his predator pet.
Footage on social media showed the animal wandering around a west Houston neighborhood on Sunday, prompting the large-scale search for the predator.
A Houston Police Department told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that there had been no further leads on the big cat’s whereabouts – but that they’d issue updates on Twitter as soon as they have any.
Cuevas is a suspect in the July 2017 murder of student Oseikhuemen Omobhude, 20, who was shot dead outside a sushi restaurant in Richmond, west of Houston.
An attorney for Cuevas continued to insist to reporters on Wednesday that his client is not the tiger’s owner and like authorities is worried about the animal’s safety.
‘We’re going to do everything we can do to try to find this cat and get this cat to a nice, safe place where it can enjoy a nice comfortable life. That´s really what we want to do,’ attorney Michael W. Elliott said during a brief news conference outside the Fort Bend County Jail.
