Tom Donoghue / DonoghuePhotography.com

Siegfried Roy feed a tiger cub during a Make-a-Wish Foundation event on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015, at the Mirage.

By John Katsilometes (contact)

Published Friday, Oct. 23, 2015 | 1:24 p.m.

Updated 3 hours, 29 minutes ago

Siegfried Roy + Emma Goldsberry

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The Kats Report Bureau on Thursday wheeled into the Villas at the Mirage, where Siegfried Roy welcomed the latest members of “our family,” as Siegfried often refers to the assortment of tigers at SR’s Secret Garden.

Not to be confused with Penn Teller’s Secret Pasture (which is a whole different vibe), the Secret Garden is long the public domain of SR’s collection of exotic cats. The event was a photo op for the ages, as the young cats Hirah, Maharani, Liberty and Justice played and tumbled growled a little. The quartet was born on Aug. 5 and are favorites of 12-year-old Emma Goldsberry of Make-A-Wish Foundation, who was dubbed the SARMOTI Cubs Child Ambassador of Conservation. Emma and her family visited from Connecticut for the event.

Afterward, I asked the duo if they would consider opening their sprawling Las Vegas compound, known as Little Bavaria, to the public. Many Vegas homes and sites have been opened over the years even recently, among them Liberace Mansion, the Mob Museum, and just last month Wayne Newton’s Casa de Shenandoah.

But don’t count on a public tour of Little Bavaria, today or ever.

“Absolutely not,” Siegfried swiftly responded, saying both Little Bavaria in the city’s far-north region and also the duo’s Jungle Palace near Las Vegas Municipal Golf Course. “This is our private – no, no, no. It’s our thing. We’ve had some offers, people who wanted to do take over the Jungle Palace and do other things. But no, no.”

SR spend most of their private time at Little Bavaria. I visited 100-acre the property a couple of years ago while writing this story about the duo on the 10th anniversary of the incident involving Mantecore that left Roy seriously injured and forever ended Siegfried Roy’s stage show. At the time, Siegfried said, “Nobody comes here to us.” The Secret Garden, paired with the Dolphin Habitat, serves as SR’s ongoing legacy.

“We have not been onstage for 12 years now, but we still get people who tell us, ‘We saw you 20 years ago,’ and have all these stories,’” Siegfried said. “So, this is a wonderful thing.”

More from the scene:

• Penn Jillette is making a return Sunday afternoon to The Slammer, his longtime Las Vegas estate at 7601 W. Wigwam Ave. The event is collaboration between the United Church of Bacon and Coalition of Reason, a barbecue to launch the crusade to turn Jilllette’s onetime home into “the world’s largest skeptic and atheist community center.” This spring Jillette’s family uprooted from The Slammer and moved to The Ridges in Summerlin. He has preferred selling the Wigwam Avenue property to an atheist interest over other suitors, or even leveling the two interlocking homes on the property.

The Home of Penn Jillette

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The event runs from noon to 4:30 p.m. and is free. It begins with a broadcast of “Penn’s Sunday School,” featuring “Ice Cream Social” podcast hosts and Vegas comics Matt Donnelly and Paul Mattingly. DJ Lenny Alfonzo, female punk act The Negative Nancys and the rock band Sunday Assembly Las Vegas (which performs with unusual instruments, I am told) are to appear. Free bacon and veggie bacon (a nod to Jillette’s recent diet and weight loss) will be served.

Naturally, this event is sure to offend a lot of people … I mean, veggie bacon?

• A show that is better than its film inspiration (and probably better than literary source matter, from what I glean), “50 Shades! A Parody” has closed at Windows at Bally’s. Fun for a while but lacked staying power, this one.

Show producer BASE Entertainment confirmed Wednesday that the show would close after the performance Nov. 15. It opened Feb. 3.In a statement, a company spokeswoman said, “The show has been well received and has entertained thousands of audience members since opening February 3rd, but after careful consideration and analysis the decision was made to bring the production’s engagement to an end.”

• Follow note after Lon Bronson’s All-Star Band celebrated its 25th anniversary last weekend with a pair of shows at Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz (and Penn blew the place up with a version of his original song, “Clothes of the Dead.”). Bronson arrived to the gig in a minivan with his daughter, Alana, a senior at Las Vegas Academy who played the flute solo in Chicago’s “Color My World” in the 7 p.m. show.

The van was filled with merchandise to be sold during and after the two shows. Late in the second performance, Bronson told both of his teenage daughters, Alana and Taylor, to head home as it was past midnight.

The two girls took off in the family’s other car, leaving the van behind for Bronson and his wife, JoAnn, to drive home. After the post-party following the second show, the Bronsons headed out the door with and Aimee Shank, who dances with the band and also helps with the act’s marketing.

Bronson reached in his pocket: No keys. Alana had left with them hours earlier. It was approaching 3 a.m. Bronson tried calling his daughter, who was fast asleep at the family home on Buffalo and Sahara. So Aimee and JoAnn drove to the Bronsons’ house, rapped on the window to wake up Alana, and JoAnn drove back to the Smith Center to deliver the van keys and help her husband load the van.

Meantime, Bronson stretched out on a metal bench in front of Boman Pavilion and waited for the return of his wife. He wore a “Lon Bronson 25th Anniversary” T-shirt and jeans and looked a little bedraggled from the night’s celebration. About 3:30 a.m., a security officer approached and asked Bronson what he was doing half-asleep on that bench surrounded by a bunch of unexplained boxes.

“You won’t believe this,” Bronson said, pointing toward the venue’s entrance, “but I just headlined there.”

And somehow, in the long history of Lon Bronson’s All-Star Band in Las Vegas, this was a befitting epilogue.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.