Cat Haven is a special place about halfway between Fresno and King’s Canyon National Park.  It is a place to learn about wild cats of all types. What it isn’t is a cat sanctuary. It is dedicated to the preservation of wild cats. Yes, they do take in a few big cats that need a new place to call home but most of their work centers around educating kids and adults and even working to save the big cats in the wild. They are part of Project Survival.  The people there make the place outstanding. While they don’t have the paved paths like the zoo, they are so accommodating and will do whatever is necessary to make your trip successful.  Our family visited with two of our group in their 90’s. Those two were treated like royalty. They took them on the tour in a golf cart and made sure all were safe as well as having a good view of the cats.

Then there are all the facts you learn about big (and small) cats. Even though the cats all look like big cats, we learned the difference between big and small cats. Big cats roar but do not purr. The small cats purr. If you can call some of those bigger cats small.  That’s just a tiny sample of the things you will learn.

There are places to donate for different non-profit groups to help cats and there is the gift shop. Finding something to remember your trip or getting a couple of presents for the kids, it’s a great way to help them out. Whether a big school group or just a family, your trip to Cat Haven will be memorable.

It’s a good thing to help preserve the wild cats. It’s also a good thing to help preserve people too. How do we preserve people? There are always those on the fringes of society that do not have a home or those who have a home but can’t afford to feed their family. Some of these people may be your neighbors or even your coworkers. You can always help in some way. Just giving food to a food bank or even starting your own non-profit to help those in need and anything in between, will help your neighbor. God told us who our neighbor is. To paraphrase, anyone in the human family is your neighbor.

So let’s help preserve the wild cats and help preserve people too. And of course, all the other animals as well. But more than that, we need to let kindness into our hearts so that it becomes part of us and leads us to do the right thing when it comes to preservation.