I would own any kind of cat that wouldn't eat me! We were pretty friendly with a couple that had a "big cat" sanctuary in FL, and their animals were my surrogate pets. Their golden jungle cats had given birth to kittens, and they were keeping one of them as a house pet to see how well she could be domesticated. The husband brought us inside to see her. She was a lovely little thing. He had warned us that she was pretty wild, but when I got down on the floor to talk to her, she approached me and started batting at the string on my sun hat, and soon we were friends. I completely forgot that she was supposed to be fierce and soon she was purring on my shoulder. When the wife came in, she was completely amazed. I hated to put the cat down.

When my son was a toddler, we went to an animal park in NH and I had one of the best experiences of my life there. Their tigers had produced four cubs, and they were allowing the mother to rear two of them, and bottle-feeding the other two. It was late fall, we were almost the only visitors to the park that day, and the keeper took the cubs out to romp in the park -- and we got to play with them. They were about the size of large puppies, with big blue eyes and enormous paws, and I took photographs of my son with them. They played just like kittens, rolling on their backs and biting our hands as we rubbed their tummies. When my son decided to walk away from one, the cub wasn't ready to let go, so he put one of his great big paws on the back of his overalls and kept him from leaving. I will never forget it!

I know big cats don't make good pets, as a rule, because when they reach adolescence they start asserting territorial and dominance instincts -- but I would love to have a job where I could take care of them and get to handle the young ones.