For all the Wayne fans out there, he is doing fantastic.  He weighs as much as Ryu, but with an obvious gut.  His hair has grown back, and the scars are pretty much hidden by his hair.  Mostly it shows up in the chink in his color pattern on both sides.  His eye is still a little off, but even that is hard to tell and most people wouldn't notice unless we told them.

His hair is the softest hair I have ever felt on a cat.  It feels like a very soft rabbit fur coat.  Which is fitting, since he is as wild as a March hare--though sweet, he can be a bit tiring to be around.

Wayne is also less likely to hide out in Jessica's room; he actually comes out and chases us when she goes to work.  But when she is home, she is definitely Mommy, and Wayne is back in the room demanding her attention.

Wayne is running around like a loon. Or perhaps he is a loon? I'm not sure. I've got a spare monitor ...   more »

I think it is cool that the Downtown Aquarium has white tigers.  This may not be PC, but I like white tigers.  We used to be members of the Houston Zoo when they still had white tigers, and I have always wondered what happened to them.  It turns out, because they don't often show up in the wild, zoos don't want them anymore.  (I gave up going to the Houston Zoo when it became impossible to get a parking place close, and I can't walk very far without resting.  No, I don't want a handicap sticker--I don't need to be hassled by people who think I am not disabled because I can walk.)

That's sort of sad.  It also seems to be a form of discrimination against something just because it is beautiful--and different.  I have a great deal of love of animals just the way they are, but I really like seeing the differences that nature can come up with on its own.  And that is what white tigers are--a natural mutation.  True, it was perpetuated by humans, but the mutation took place on its own, without human interference.  Apparently zoo administrators have decided that since humans bred the wild white that was found, to continue to breed whites is like exploiting the animals. 

When I was a kid, we bred Australian shepherds (now called Australian Cattle Dogs) and would get a white every once in awhile (and then we would stop breeding the parents).  They usually could see, but not hear. (No, we didn't automatically put them down.  They were great dogs. Even as an adult, one of the great danes we had was a white--and Baron was brilliant, though deaf.) This isn't a problem with the white tigers; they don't have that kind of damaging trait--at least, not yet. 

The biggest problems for white tigers is that people who should know better have turned their backs on the breeding of these beautiful animals.  The zoos have left the breeding to for-profit wild cat breeders who often don't care what the bloodlines are, as long as they can pump out more cats.  (Think of the horrible problems dogs from puppy mills have). Without a good, standardized, carefully selected studbook, unfortunate inbreeding problems will occur. 

The owner of the white tigers at the Downtown Aquarium says that these animals will never be bred, they are not siblings, and they are from good stock.  Good for him; too bad places like the Houston Zoo can't see the white tigers for the animals they are, and not as a symbol of exploitation of wild animals.