Like a lot of people in Baton Rouge and across Louisiana, Pineville’s Jeri Guinn was sad when she heard LSU’s live tiger mascot Mike VI had only weeks to live. And then, as The Town Talk reports, she read a story about Steve Cotner, the man who raised the LSU mascot when he was a cub, and that really tugged at her heart.
“You read this story about a man who has a tiger in the house watching TV with him,” Guinn tells The Town Talk. “It’s just such a personal story. This wasn’t just a tiger to him, it’s a friend. It was very touching to me. I wanted to help him.”
After seeing a Facebook comment from Cotner saying he wished he could visit his dying friend one last time, Guinn took it upon herself to make it happen. She started a GoFundMe page to pay for Cotner to visit Mike VI one final time and the effort reached its $3,000 goal in two days. The logistics of the trip are being worked out.
Cotner was a volunteer at Great Cats of Indiana, a nonprofit sanctuary and rescue facility for big cats and other large carnivores, where Mike was born in 2005. The two-week-old cub, known then as Roscoe, and Cotner gravitated to each other, and Cotner became the cub’s primary handler.
Until Mike got too large, Cotner would bring the tiger home at night, where he would cuddle in his handler’s lap while they watched TV together. He made sure to socialize Mike as much as possible, which may have played in role in LSU vet David Baker dubbing him “perhaps the best in a long line of great LSU tiger mascots” for his friendly demeanor.
Cotner was sad but supported the decision to donate Mike to LSU in 2007.
“I realize that it is hard for people to understand my pain,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “Raising this tiger was an experience of a lifetime.”
LSU veterinarians announced last week that Mike VI’s cancer had spread, and the tiger was not expected to live more than two months. They said Monday that Mike has been moved into hospice care and will no longer be let into his outdoor habitat near Tiger Stadium.
“He’s an icon for the state,” Guinn said, “not just for LSU football.”
Guinn is working with interested parties to plan the trip from Logansport, Indiana, to Baton Rouge for Cotner and his wife to see Mike. In addition to cash donations, Guinn has received offers of help including donated airline miles, hotel points, even pilots willing to fly them on personal planes.
