LOUISE FLANAGAN
Panjo on Thursday did what cats do best - he slept.
Visitors are a little wary of the 150kg striped tiger tied to a long leash attached to a tree, lounging on the grass in the front garden, but the family and close friends treat him like a slightly naughty overgrown cat.
"Hello puddy cat," croons his owner Goosey Fernandes as he snuggles his hefty pet and holds a bottle of milk for him.
"I love my kitty cat."
Fernandes' son Justin tickles Panjo's ears, leaving the tiger purring loudly. They play-wrestle, Justin putting his head between Panjo's huge jaws, letting the tiger put his massive paws around him to hug him, and saying 'No!' very firmly if the tiger gets a bit boisterous until it submissively backs down.
Fernandes is relieved to have his 'baby' back safe at the Jugomara game farm southwest of Groblersdal, and the pampered tiger seems happy to be home.
On Thursday the Limpopo authorities apparently realised they had failed to process Fernandes' application for a permit to keep the tiger and hurriedly arranged to meet Fernandes.
Fernandes said he applied for a permit when he first got Panjo a year and a half ago, submitted the forms but nothing happened. Apparently there's confusion over whether he should apply to Limpopo or Mpumalanga as his farm is on the border.
"This clown never came back to me ever. Then today he phones me," said Fernandes.
On Thursday officials from the Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism didn't want to comment until they had more clarity.
The NSPCA previously told The Star that permits weren't needed to keep exotic animals like tigers, but transport permits were needed.
The family were desperate when 17-month-old Panjo disappeared on Monday night.
Fernandes had been transporting him, in the back of his Ford F250 bakkie, from the game farm to the family smallholding in Endicott, Springs, when the canopy door came open and Panjo jumped out somewhere along the way. He has often travelled between the farm and the smallholding and was due to go to a Springs vet for innoculations and a tracking chip.
"We'll have to start bringing the vet out to the premises and not driving around with him," said Justin on Thursday.
Panjo was finally found about 8pm on Tuesday near Verena, south of Groblersdal, after a search by dozens of people. His Facebook site 'Panjo Fernandes' logged 550 new friends during the search.
The two-day hunt brought a flood of offers of help, from loudhailers to helicopters and specialised infrared tracking devices and now a sponsored tracking collar so he'll never get lost again.
But there were also crackpots.
One man phoned Fernandes to claim he had caught the tiger and that he'd killed some livestock.
"I want R10 000 now or I'll poison your tiger," he told Fernandes, who told him he was offering a reward of twice that for the animal's safe return and would gladly pay it. He never heard from the man again.
Another man also claimed to have lost livestock but wouldn't come up with proof.
It was a story which many feared would end in disaster but which had a happy ending: Panjo was unhurt apart from from scrapes and bruising on his face and paws, apparently from jumping from the moving bakkie, and nobody was injured by him.
Justin said that judging from his droppings, he hadn't eaten any meat.
"By the looks of it, he ate grass most of the time." There also weren't any traces of blood on the tiger which would have indicated that he had caught something.
So why does Fernandes keep a tiger?
"It's the love and passion I've got for tigers," he said.
"When I bought this farm three years ago, I started looking around for tigers."
He wants to breed tigers and already owns four more which live in Zeerust until more enclosures are built at Jugomara.
Justin said there wasn't really a plan to sell them.
"I think we're going to be keeping them because they're more like family to us than anything else," he said.
"It's one of the most expensive hobbies," he said with a laugh, explaining they'd been inspired by a trip to a big cat sanctuary.
"It's the love and passion for the animal because it's such a special animal that no-one really has, so it just makes life a bit more interesting."
The tiger has the run of the luxurious home but he also has a spacious enclosure, built because Fernandes knows he'll be less controllable as he gets older.
From the huge verandah with a view across his game farm, Fernandes can look down on Panjo's enclosure.
It's the size of a rugby field, much bigger than the 5m x 20m which Justin said was the legally required minimum.
There's a sparkling clean swimming pool with a little waterfall - tigers love water ? tyres hanging from trees, balls with teeth marks, and a ?cave? of stone, dark and cool inside with straw and a chewed car tyre on the floor. A tiger-sized jungle gym is planned.
"We've given him a piece of heaven on earth here," said Justin.
There's 3m high game fencing around it, electrified both to stop a tiger getting out and any poisonous snakes getting in.
They're planning to extend the enclosure, possibly eventually circling the house with a 'tunnel' of tigers.
The rest of the game farm stretches to hills behind the enclosure, with sturdy double layer game fencing on the borders. Giraffe, kudu, impala, eland and smaller game dot the hills.
"We haven't been hunting on the farm so they're multiplying," said Rosa.
Some asked if the disappearance wasn't engineered as a publicity stunt.
The family is furious at the suggestion.
"I cried the whole night on Monday night. I didn't even sleep.
"Publicity stunt? I've got better things to do with my life," said Fernandes.
Rosa summed up their fear from those two days: "If he killed someone, he would have had to have been put down."