'Zoo must go wild with cat lot'

MANY single women share their homes with cats — but this feline lover snuggles up with four cheetahs, a jaguar, and a lion!

But Riana van Nieuwenhuizen's predator pets are as tame as domestic moggies and love being hugged and stroked by tourists, who visit the feline fan's house and outdoor nature reserve.

The 46-year-old from Bloemfontein, South Africa, lets animals wander the property and grounds freely.

And some of the felines like Fiela, a female cheetah, have even learnt to open doors and cupboards by themselves.

Riana’s animals manage to gobble down 25kg of chicken a day but they’re still always looking for scraps.

Lion cub Elsa, who is only a few months old, has paws as big as saucers, but Riana warns she’s also quite light fingered.

She said: “Elsa is just crazy about handbags.

“She’ll grab it off you and carry it away if she gets the chance.”

Despite the fact Riana’s pets are fearsome carnivores, she claims she’s never been bitten and they all snuggle up on her bed and get involved with her daily chores.

“In the summer they sleep outside but in the winter they’re all up on my bed,” she said.

“Then they all want a finger to suck and they purr so loudly I can hardly hear the TV."

She added: “When I do the washing and cooking they come along and poke their noses in.”

Riana has been besotted with animals since she was a child. Her father used to tease her that she was so dirty from playing with her four-legged friends that she couldn’t come to sit at the dinner table with the family.

In 2006 she received a letter from the bank saying she had qualified for a loan.

“My first thought was 'this is my big chance to buy a cheetah'."

Fiela was six-weeks-old when Riana brought her home from a game farm for £4,000.

Riana later resigned from her job as an office manager at a law firm because she couldn’t bear to be away from Fiela.

She began looking for work with animals and luckily a friend asked her to move into his game farm, in Emoya, near Bloemfontein.

Riana has since built a closed camp around the house and taken in many more animals.

http://www.cheetahexperience.com/

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