“Tiger King” star Carole Baskin is on the prowl after joining the conversation about a tiger spotted roaming around a Houston neighborhood.  

In an interview with CNN, Baskin called for Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn to join the Big Cat Public Safety Act which prohibits private ownership of big cats. 

“If this would have passed last year, this wouldn’t have happened this time,” Baskin said.  

Baskin said the tiger was likely used as a “pay-to-play” prop before becoming too big. She also said these occurrences are not uncommon in Texas.  

“The only reason people have tigers as pets is trying to show off to others that they are more powerful than the most powerful creature on the planet,” Baskin said.  

The tiger in question still hasn’t been located, according to the Houston Police Department. 

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‘It’s someone’s pet’: Houston police searching for mysterious tiger spotted walking around neighborhood

Neighbors recorded video of a tiger crawling in a Houston neighborhood front yard on Sunday. An off-duty sheriff’s deputy made contact with the alleged owner, Victor Hugo Cuevas, before he put the cat in an SUV and drove away at a high rate of speed. 

Cuevas was arrested on Monday and charged with evading police. He had been out on bond for an unrelated case in a 2017 fatal shooting of a man outside a restaurant in neighboring Fort Bend County, the Associated Press reported. 

Cuevas’s lawyer, Michael W. Elliott, said a man named “Deandre” is the true owner of the tiger named India, KHOU-11 reported. 

“People are making a lot of assumptions in this particular case. Maybe he might be the hero out there who caught the tiger that was in the neighborhood,” Elliott told the AP. 

Follow reporter Asha Gilbert @Coastalasha. Email: agilbert@usatoday.com.

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