This Man Kept a Pet Tiger in His Apartment. Here’s What It Taught Us.

Are tigers really that bad as pets?

A few years ago an impending storm forced me and my family to evacuate our area and take refuge in a pet-friendly hotel, although this hotel probably wasn’t expecting my particular brand of “pet”, which included snakes, an iguana, a small toucan, a porcupine, a spotted genet, and other “exotic” animals.

We also brought my dog Hope, a Pomeranian-mix with a propensity for yapping. We rented two rooms side by side — one would contain me and all of my animals except the dog — the other, my mom, dad, sister and Hope. Guess which room another hotel guest ended up complaining about.

Yup, we were informed that if our dog continued to disturb this guest, we’d eventually be asked to leave, even though we weren’t on vacation, we were waiting for the waters to recede in our neighborhood. However, we were lucky no one detected the “zoo” in the adjacent room. That was also the case with the residents of Apartment 5E of the Drew Hamilton public housing complex in Harlem, New York.