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Painting Turns Tigers Into Scaredy Cats

Posted on: Thursday, 24 April 2003, 06:00 CDT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Tony and Emily, a pair of Siberian tigers at the San Francisco Zoo, are just a couple of scaredy cats.

Their eyes bulge, their mouths loll and their ears fold back - behaviors a feline exhibits when frightened - upon seeing a lifelike portrait of their popular predecessor.

Unfortunately for the two tiger siblings, they are just going to have to cope. The eight-foot oil painting of Sedova, an adored Siberian tiger who lived at the zoo for 19 years before her death in 1992, is going to stay hanging in their habitat because no other place exists for it, zoo officials say.

"Animals are more important than pictures. But it is a magnificent portrait - kind of a testimonial to one of the zoo's most beloved cats," said Linda Caratti, the tigers' keeper.

According to Caratti, there is no question that 11-year-old Emily and Tony are unnerved by the painting, which reportedly bears an impressive resemblance to its subject. The tigers often refuse to enter the exhibit at feeding time and won't turn their backs on the fierce gaze staring out at them from a wall.

"It's their instinct to feel threatened by another tiger," Caratti told the San Francisco Chronicle. "They just haven't figured out it's a picture. Instead, they look totally scared, like it's a giant ghost tiger."

Tony and Emily haven't always been such wimps. For a decade, they and the Sedova picture lived at opposite ends of the zoo's lion house and they couldn't see their late forerunner.

Renovations to the lion house begun last year soon changed that. The tigers were temporarily, and then permanently, evicted from their side to make more room for the lions. Both relocations put them in full view of Sedova, provoking unusual behavior from the felines.

After giving the pair a month to get used to their new cohabitant, Caratti covered the portrait with a drop cloth. "I figured we should stop tormenting them," she said.

But visitors started asking why the cherished painting was covered, and because there's no other wall space big enough to accommodate it, Emily and Tony will have to live with the added anxiety.

For Oakland artist Dan Fontes, who spent about two weeks in 1990 painting Sedova from a photograph, the discomfort his creation is causing has been bittersweet. Its ability to strike terror in Tony and Emily is, after all, a testament to how effectively he captured his subject.

"That was one of my more successful paintings," he said. "The trueness of the spirit of the animal came through."

At the same time, Fontes never intended his work of art to be so upsetting. Instead of removing the portrait, he wonders if there isn't another solution for Emily and Tony.

"Has anyone thought of returning them to the wild?" Fontes asked.

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