Where to Move the Cats?
Anyway, the big cats had to be moved someplace. So, the pair purchased a huge ranch just outside Los Angeles. In addition to the 71 lions, they also ended up adding two elephants, four leopards, two Jaguars, four cranes, nine panthers, 26 tigers, ten pumps, and one tigon to the mix.
September 1966: American actor Tippi Hedren stands with her husband, the American movie producer Noel Marshall, her daughter, future American actress Melanie Griffith, and three unidentified boys at the opening of the ‘Ice Follies,’ Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Max B. Miller/Fotos International/Getty Images)
They were also thinking about a hippo, but they decided against it. To give the animals a comfortable place to live in, they got a colonial mansion made; with a flat roof and all. They transformed the California desert to look like the Tanzanian Serengeti within a matter of a few months. A lot of Mozambique bushes, cottonwoods were planted.