Yesterday, Anton Rea Cutajar, the infamous Maltese Tigerman, contacted me to clarify some points about this article. Whilst speaking to him, he was being friendly (in what seems to be an apparent change in his infamous PR methods) so I immediately took the opportunity to press him with some questions.
He clarified that the signage for the EU funds on the wall of his farm is not for his farm, but for works done to the road and that he never received any EU funds for his project. He also confirmed he does not own a Maserati.
He then went on to elaborate on the tigers and whatnot and this were it got a little bit informative and interesting. He said that he does not feed his tigers horse-meat because that would increase their blood pressure and instead, he mostly feeds them chicken and white meat. He also confirmed that some of tigers that were exported to Libya were his and these were exported from his end in 2019 and 2020.
He defended his practice of keeping tigers saying that he has a very good and clean facility for them which is also highly secure. Of course, I could not agree with him on a moral principle. However, he also said that he is not interested in expanding his tiger operation or to import or breed any more tigers. He also admitted that public pressure and scrutiny made him reflect on his past behaviour and the way he communicated and that he had also changed as a person, yet insisted he had genuine love for his tiger project and enjoyed spending time with animals. He also said that he owns horses too.
He then turned to discuss the overall situation of wild animals in Malta and said that many of the tigers in Malta are actually unlicensed and being kept in private homes. He said he has got nothing to do with this illegal practice and that he has always made sure that his private zoo operates according to law.
Then he switched onto politics with his girlfriend making a contribution. He said that as a Labourite, he wasn’t very enthusiastic about the last elections and refrained to speak about politics on his social media pages. He said that he still went to vote, and made it a point that he didn’t vote for Roberta Metsola but refused to reply on whether he had voted for Labour. His girlfriend then complained to me that I was using an old photo him which doesn’t necessarily reflect how he thinks or feels today. I asked him what he thought about it but he didn’t want to comment, and I felt a silent sense of dissociation from the end of the phone. I thought that it was only fair to use a different photo of him given that we (current and past Labourites) all have photos with Joseph Muscat. Therefore and accordingly, I have given the photo the Soviet treatment.
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