AS a ‘tame’ 14st male puma ripped Terry Moore’s foot off his leg, he thought he was a dead man.
“I was . It took me ten minutes hitting it with a broom, I called my wife and she helped bash it on the head,”; the 78-year-old says.
“The cat freaked out. It is pure luck I had the phone and broom to hand, I wouldn’t be here if the air ambulance hadn’t come.”;
The November 5 attack, which unfolded after a security door fell off the puma’s hide as Moore entered its enclosure, forced doctors to below the knee.
The mauling was the culmination of a stranger-than-fiction downfall for the man dubbed ‘‘, who at his height befriended showbiz heavyweights like and reached TV stardom.
That occurred before a raid at his -based Cat Survival Trust uncovered a hellish compound of dilapidated enclosures filled with dying, emaciated and disease-ridden big cats living in squalor.
Frozen carcasses of critically endangered animals were found in chest freezers and a vet hadn’t visited in years.
Moore was found guilty of multiple animal welfare offences at Crown in January and The Cat Survival Trust was closed down. The surviving 28 animals were rehomed or euthanised due to significant issues.
Moore, who is waiting to receive a prosthetic leg, was handed a £14,380 fine and banned from keeping animals for five years.
Now living as an amputee in a static caravan whiling away his days immersed in , he denies any wrongdoing.
In an exclusive interview, the disgraced keeper doubles down on his widely discredited methods and makes a harrowing confession about the events that led to dead cats being found stuffed in his freezer.
And our pictures reveal the extraordinary decline of his once-thriving sanctuary, which now lies abandoned and overgrown with weeds.
“It was a smear campaign, that’s all it was”;, a delusional Moore told The Sun of the allegations against him.
For 48 years, the wildlife nut wowed TV audiences on The Show, Daybreak and Animal Planet with his private collection of the world’s rarest big cats.
Starting with ocelots and elusive Scottish wild cats in his garden in Stevenage, he grew his operation and, in 1977, bought an unassuming 11.5-acre site just off the A1 in Codicote for £30,000.
There, alongside wife Judith, he founded the Cat Survival Trust, a taking in cast-offs from British and European zoos with a dream of saving species on the brink of extinction.
He said: “They were cats that would have been put down, old and aged cats, cats with long-term illnesses.
“We did a lot of studies looking at population behaviour. I went around the world lecturing and attended conferences.”;
Over the years Moore amassed “over 200”; big cats, ranging from critically endangered snow leopards, which hail from the Himalayas, to jungle-dwelling jaguars and desert-native caracals. He invested millions into building the facility, which has dozens of enclosures.
The site was not open to the public but those who paid membership fees were granted tours and days with the animals.
Terrence Moore knew how endangered these species were, understood their vulnerability to exploitation and should have been there to protect them
Detective Constable Beth Talbot
But online reviews of the sanctuary revealed a raft of dangerous practices taking place, including a photo of two kids sticking their fingers through a cage to stroke a Snow Leopard.
One review warned: “The place is a complete junkyard... If you love animals please don’t come here, it’s heartbreaking.
“What also got me on edge was that the guide touched these animals through the bars, I did not feel safe here.”;
While the trust made around £7,000 a year from photography days, it was the millions of pounds in donations and gifts in wills left by supporters that kept the site, which cost £5,000 a month to run, afloat. One person left £250,000 to the sanctuary.
Moore was eventually found guilty on seven counts of using an endangered animal species for commercial gain without a licence.
He said: “We had no help from the Government, that’s why we had to do the photo days, the visits.
“It’s what kept us going. We didn’t do it to make a profit.”;
Following intelligence received from the National Wildlife Unit, officers from Hertfordshire Constabulary, accompanied by a vet, raided the site in July 2022.
Inside, they discovered animals being treated with homeopathic remedies and others suffering from diseases which Moore had not sought any veterinary care for in years.
The site, described by one rescuer as “a hoarder’s paradise”;, appeared to be a twisted scientific experiment based on Moore’s rejection of conventional and preference for natural remedies.
The place is a complete junkyard... If you love animals please don’t come here, it’s heartbreaking
Online reviewer
Evidence presented in court showed he failed to source much-needed medical help for some of the big cats he was responsible for, which were eventually put down.
Blood-soaked food preparation areas were found to be lacking appropriate hygiene standards and the enclosures were deemed insecure.
Harrowing confession
Yet one of the most harrowing discoveries at the site was two chest freezers containing the carcasses of 26 big cats.
In an extraordinary admission, Moore now says these creatures, which included a snow leopard, had died in the late 1970s and had been frozen for nearly 50 years. The police said he failed to seek an appropriate cremation option.
He claimed: “We weren’t allowed to sell the carcasses because of wildlife trade problems.
“So all I could do was put them in the freezers. We had two freezers full of big cats.”;
In an even darker revelation, Moore said he would euthanize the animals himself by placing them in a box before sealing a plastic bag over the top and filling it with carbon dioxide. This causes the animal to panic before suffocating to death.
“Two minutes and they’re dead”;, he says, chillingly, before ridiculing the conventional veterinary practice of a lethal injection.
Police said there were no records of animal deaths kept at the site, records which Moore claims were lost when his computer “went up in smoke”;.
Moore was eventually found guilty of four counts of animal cruelty and using animals for commercial gain without a licence.
The charges related to a wildcat named Hamish, a Bengal cat named Jasmine, a jungle cat named Lily and an unnamed caracal.
He was cleared of eight counts, namely against two snow leopards, a jaguar, an Amur leopard, a Eurasian lynx kitten, a hybrid cat, geese, and a serval.
Following Moore’s conviction, a team of 20 rescuers, led by Cam Whitnall, of the Big Cat Sanctuary in Smarden, , and James Cork, from its sister site Hertfordshire Zoo, worked round the clock for three months to rescue the big cats left behind at the sanctuary.
Most were nursed back to health but Comet, a seriously rare Amur leopard, had to be euthanised along with Jags the jaguar, Eurasian lynxes Mrs Pudding and Sally and a serval called Evie.
All that remains of the doomed sanctuary are rows upon rows of eerie, overgrown and collapsing enclosures with signs reading: ‘KEEP AWAY – THEY BITE!’.
Moore’s downfall bears a haunting resemblance to the demise of in the hit series Tiger King.
While slamming Exotic as “an idiot”; and “a total showman”;, he counts – Joe’s nemesis and the target of his murder-for-hire plot which landed him with a 21-year jail term – as a good friend and a “quite amazing”; person.
Disgraced Moore admits he misses his animals but has no interest in owning another big cat. He is currently re-wilding the dilapidated site despite claiming he has been offered £9million by housing developers.
Reflecting on the ordeal, he said: “The animals weren’t unhealthy. Yes, you could make every enclosure bigger. But did I get any help from the Government?
“Did they pay anything towards the animals we took in from them, or from members of the public that might have released them into the wild? I had no help from them at all!”;
Detective Constable Beth Talbot, from the North Herts Local Crime Unit, who led the , said Moore’s case was “complex and unique”;.
She said: “It is clear from the evidence that the Cat Survival Trust was poorly run.
“Terrence Moore knew how endangered these species were, understood their vulnerability to exploitation and should have been there to protect them.
“However, several animals at the site were in a sorry state and suffered at the hands of a man who should have looked after them.
“This case showed how Moore had a distaste for modern veterinary medicine and failed to hold accurate records of his animals, some of which face extinction in the wild. The sanctuary should have been a safe haven.”;
Senior Crown Prosecutor in CPS Thames and Chiltern, Jan Muller, added: “Moore exploited some of the animals in his care, leaving them to suffer unnecessarily.
“Evidence showed him failing to source much-needed medical help for some of the big cats he was responsible for.
“These animals were forced to live in squalor and Moore neglected them to such an extent that some died from illnesses that could have been treated.”;
