Though friendly and well-fed - somebody had been leaving big bowls of food for the animal - the tiger was in a cage too small for its size, said Lara Cottingham, spokeswoman and chief of staff for the city's Administration and Regulatory Affairs Department, which oversees Houston's animal shelter.
The tiger was tranquilised and transported to a city animal shelter, where it was temporarily placed in a horse pen separate from other animals, Cottingham said. The city doesn't have the facilities or resources to take care of a tiger, which typically eats up to 10kg a day, but a wildlife sanctuary in Texas had volunteered to give the tiger a permanent home.
Cottingham said officials believe the tiger is female, though they couldn't be sure until a veterinarian has examined it.
BARC Houston, the city's animal shelter, takes in about 26,000 animals a year, mostly cats and dogs. Cottingham said this isn't the first time an abandoned tiger has been rescued, but such incidents are rare.
"Unfortunately, some people think it's cool to have a tiger or exotic animals as a pet. . . . What often happens is it starts as a cute, cuddly little kitten and grows into a really large, expensive and potentially dangerous creature," Cottingham said. "That's how these animals are abandoned or left in really bad circumstances."
"Hopefully the moral of the story is the tiger is going to a great place that can take care of it," Cottingham said.
The unusual case evoked memories of the 2000 comedy Dude, where's my car?, in which two bumbling potheads spent a long night partying and woke up with a fuzzy memory of the past 24 hours.
In "Dude, where's my tiger?," as Cottingham joked, an alleged weed smoker - who wishes to remain anonymous - found the tiger, whose owner remains unknown.
