Feeding the Bobcat

I was getting so many busted owls and hawks last winter--just giving them a way-station and transfer to the Ohio Wildlife Center via my Owl Angel Lee H. , that I asked my neighbors Sherm and Beth to save me their mice when they snap-trapped them. I got a nice fat bag of about ten frozen organic free-range white-footed mice. Yahoo! Plopped 'em in the freezer right next to the lima beans for the next raptor emergency. As soon as I got the call, I took one out to thaw.

It had occurred to me that Bobkit might appreciate some natural food, and his digestive system would likely need a tuneup after a couple of days of canned cat food. Mouse organ meat, fur and bones: just the ticket.

Speaking of galvanized: Bobkit sez GIMME THAT THING. NOW. This I know how to eat.

Mama brought us these and sometimes I didn't get one. 

His wild thing came out to growl and play. Ahh, the blue eyes, still hazy and uncertain in sight. The rows of sapsucker holes on his forelegs. The dot dash and scrawl on his forehead. The eyeliner. 

I forgot to mention his fur texture in the last post. It felt like shearling--incredibly thick and lush, nothing like a housecat's. Wool, really. Amazing.

After nibbling on its toes, he started chewing in earnest at the mouse's head. There was a mighty crunch and crack. The power evident in his teeth and jaws gave me pause. He simply pulverized that mouse, head to tail.

You'll just have to watch him in action. This is likely as close as most of y'all are ever going to get to a bobkitten. Until that day, I never figured I'd see, much less touch, a baby bobcat.

Life has been throwing so many roses at my feet lately. Fast and furious, and I'm fielding them as fast as I can. The trick is to slow down enough to gather them up and know when the really cool stuff is happening. And then, of course, to give them away. Roses on your pillow:

The next morning, I had to take Bill to work (car trouble). And to reprovision the house. I left early, around 7, and was back by 9 AM. I figured Eric Bear would call me to let me know where the kitten was going after 9. Wrong. He was sitting in his black truck right in my driveway when I got home, ready to take the bobkit to his foster home. Not fooling around.

A rehabilitator in Lake County had agreed to take our adorable little charge. A big outdoor acclimation pen, the right foods...it's not a trivial thing, raising a bobkitten up to be a bobcat, and keeping the wild in him in the process. I wouldn't pretend to know all that's involved. But I felt incredibly privileged to have housed, fed and touched him, to have gazed into those unfocused blue eyes and told him everything was going to be OK.  To have felt a bobcat's purr.

I gave him a mouse for the road. Fare well, little beautiful thing. You already look better, just for a night and three good meals. 

Thank you to my friends for doing the right thing for this sweet creature, and to Washington County Wildlife Officer Eric Bear for seeing him off to the right home. My heros.

Best part: If all goes well, he may come back to Indigo Hill for release. Wouldn't that be nice? Bobcat release party! A spotted streak, disappearing into the woods. Cross your fingers.

To Touch a Baby Bobcat

I have so many fond memories of my dad, and one of my favorites is his saying, out of nowhere, 

"I've always thought a bobcat would make a nice pet. Get him young, tame him down, that'd be a real nice pet."

He'd usually go on, "I don't have much use for housecats, but a bobcat seems like a real nice animal."

Well. 

As to the "getting him young" part, this'n my friends, who know cats very well, figured at about five weeks old, straight from the woods to their drainpipe. He had all his teeth.

He was rawther well armed. 

In nail and in tooth. That little sucker was absolutely gnawing on the gauntlets. Young as he was, he knew he was wild, and did not appreciate being handled for the transfer from bed to feeding carrier.

My friend gently installed him in the feeding carrier and I offered fresh minced raw chicken breast, which I thought would be better for him than cat food. The wildlife rehabilitator I had spoken to had recommended stew beef, but I didn't have any on hand. The chicken had been bought that day, and I rinsed it too, knowing that chicken can carry a good bacterial load.

The bobkitten heartily approved of the diet change. My friends chuckled at his avid acceptance of the birdy offering. "He likes your cooking better!"

The first thing Eric Bear, our Washington County Wildlife Officer, asked when I phoned was, "Are you sure it's a bobcat? Does it have the white spots on back of its ears?"  (He don't know me vewwy well, do he?)

White spots: Check. Leetle bitty tufts, too.

Officer Bear wanted me, as a Category II wildlife rehabilitator, to take the kitten so all would be legal until he could get in touch with ODNR in Columbus, which would match the kitten with someone who knew how to care for bobcats, and had the facilities to return them to the wild.

Oh, well, if I must...He'd spend Sunday night in my care, and with luck we'd have a rehabilitator lined up sometime Monday morning.

Category II means I've had my rabies shots and taken a course on handling rabies vector species, so theoretically I'm equipped to do this. Totally feeling my way. Who gets a baby bobcat, after all?

As long as we had to handle him, we decided to see to some of the hideous burrs matting his fur. We wondered how long he'd been without the care of his mother. I could feel every bone, every bump of his little spine. Looked like a male, which is hard to tell from this blurry shot, but please note teeny tiny stump tail and giant hindclaws. 

My friend held him firmly and I went to work on the burrs, picking them out of his fur as quickly as I could. My fingers moved up and down his tiny body, and as I worked him over, I felt him relax and go still. Twice, I heard a rumble that was not a growl. Like the chicken dinner, this made sense to him. I envisioned his lost mama holding him down, pulling out burrs with her teeth, and I imagined he did too.

He was purring.

I was so disarmed by that, by feeling him respond to kindness and what felt familiar to him. No matter how wild, all young things need to know they're loved.

All right, DOD. You may have a point. Every cell in my body was wanting to hold him up under my chin and rock him to sleep. But wild things must stay wild, and this dear little creature would be no exception. Later that night I'd creep up and peek through the vents in the carrier to see him stretched out luxuriously on his side, belly round, one arm flung out, cuddled into his pile of soft towels. It was a sight to do my heart good. 

Next: Wild thing, wild food!