by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
After an estimated 200 man-hours of idea sessions, sketches and scale models, TTV Architects’ Big Cat was loaded into a truck headed to Tampa on Friday. Big Cats for Kids is a fundraiser for the Otis Smith Kids Foundation and comes two years after the Foundation’s successful manatee fundraiser. Today, those manatees are scattered all over Jacksonville.
TTV President Tri Vu said that he sent his company’s Big Cat to Wacky World Studios in Tampa for what he called “special effects installation.” He didn’t divulge any details, but did say, “We do nothing that is normal.”
Bonnie Upright, executive director of the Otis Smith Foundation, said that as of July 14, the Big Cat adoption total was 49, just one short of their goal.
“But we’re going to keep going and get as many adopted as we can,” she said.
Upright added that 29 Big Cats are either being worked on by artists or have already been returned to the Foundation. The fundraising felines will begin appearing all over town in September.