CNN on Wednesday tapped Carol Baskin, the owner of an animal sanctuary and a central character in the Netflix docu-series “Tiger King,” to comment on a tiger that was roaming loose in a Houston neighborhood Sunday.
Baskin said the Senate’s failure to pass a law that would make large cat ownership illegal, among other provisions, was to blame and put some of the onus on Texas GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.
“You know, this has become kind of commonplace in Texas,” Baskin said. “And so I really hope that Sens. Cruz and Cornyn will sign onto the Big Cat Public Safety Act.”
“Because if they had, last year when the House passed this bill — the Senate didn’t bring it up for a vote — if it had passed last year, this wouldn’t have happened this time.”
Baskin, a large cats rights activist, supported the bill as it passed the House last December.
On Sunday, residents of a Houston neighborhood alerted authorities after spotting the tiger lounging in the front yards of area homes.
The tiger was allegedly owned by Victor Hugo Cuevas, 26, who was out on bond for a prior murder charge in Fort Bend County, CNN reported.
After police arrived, Cuevas appeared, begged them not to shoot the tiger and then ushered it into an SUV and drove off.
Cuevas was later arrested, but police have not found the tiger.
It is legal to own a tiger in Texas, with some restrictions, but not legal to have one within Houston city limits.
The main character in “Tiger King” was a man named Joe Exotic, the owner of an Oklahoma zoo who was sentenced to prison for a murder-for-hire plot that targeted Baskin, the founder of Big Cat Rescue, among other charges.