A football-sized hairball that had to be surgically removed from a Seminole tiger's stomach last week will be displayed at a Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum.

“We’re very happy to add this to our collection,” said Ripley's spokesman Edward Meyer.

The 400-pound tiger is named Ty, and its owner, Vernon Yates, who runs a non-profit Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation center, said Ripley's offered to buy the 4-pound hairball.

“I said, no, I would give it to them," Yates said. "If, when it’s on exhibit, they would be thanking the doctors that saved his life.” 

Dr. Don Woodman from Animal Hospital of Northwood in Safety Harbor assisted Dr. Brian Luria and Dr. Mike Reems at BluePearl in Clearwater with the surgery last Wednesday.

The Ripley's spokesman said Yates offered to drop off the giant hairball at their Orlando museum.

"We’re excited about it, and we can’t wait to actually see it," Meyer said. "Vernon says he’s actually going to drive it up here and deliver it to us. We’ll have some sort of little homecoming when it gets here.”

Meyer said Ripley's has four Florida museums, and Ty's hairball will likely be displayed at one of those locations.

“Probably Panama City Beach," he said.

In the meantime, Yates is trying to preserve the hairball by keeping it in his refrigerator.

“Originally, it was just laying out here," Yates said. "Then when Ripley’s wanted it. ... I closed the bags up and I actually put it in my refrigeration to preserve it.”

The Ripley's spokesman said Ty's hairball is about half the size of the world's largest, but it's the first one that'll be on display from a tiger.

"The biggest we’ve ever heard is actually a human - a young girl from India," Meyer said. "But our biggest cow hairball is 36 inches around and weighs just a little under 10-pounds... We certainly had never heard of a tiger one before so it caught my interest tremendously.”

Ty's big hairball has made international headlines. A Taiwanese animation company even did a story about it.

"The team here at TomoNews US was so surprised by this hairy situation we created a video animating what happened," Jamie Cheng, international marketing editor, wrote in an email to Bay News 9.

Yates got a kick out of that animation.

“That’s kind of cute,” he said.

Yates said his 17-year-old big cat is now drinking water on its own but will only eat out of his hand.

“The first few days after the surgery I really thought he would die," Yates said. “But every day was a little bit better. ... Now I feel more like a 10 percent chance of dying now and 90 percent he is going to recover."