Posted on 09/26/2019 11:01:37 AM PDT by Red Badger
Sept. 25 (UPI) -- A Tennessee woman who rescued a kitten she spotted running across a road brought the feline into her car and took it home before discovering the creature actually was a baby bobcat.
Jill Hicks of Chattanooga said she was driving recently when she spotted the kitten running across the busy road and decided to rescue it.
"So I pulled over and surprisingly it didn't run from me," Hicks said in a Facebook post. "I put it in the car with me and it climbed all over me like a kitten would do, got in floorboard under my feet, and after stopping a couple of times to get it nestled into my lap, I finally got home with it."
Hicks named the animal Arwen. She said it wasn't until a neighbor came over to look at the kitten that its identity was revealed.
"I was going to go home from dinner, give her a bath, put her in the bed with me and when we decided she was a bobcat, I was like I probably better not do all of that," Hicks told WDEF-TV.
Hicks took Arwen to the For Fox Sake Wildlife Rescue, where rehabilitators confirmed the young animal was a bobcat.
Rehabilitator Juniper Russo said people can look for signs to determine whether a kitten actually is a young bobcat.
"Bobcat kittens always have spots in some form or another, whereas actual spotted markings are really rare in domestic cats and a bobcat kitten will sometimes, but not always, have black tufts on the ears, which are also possible in domestic cats, but pretty rare," Russo said.
Russo said Arwen will be cared for until the animal is old enough to be released back into the wild, likely around March.
Hicks said she has no regrets about her actions.
"Even though I thought she was a kitten, had I known she was a bobcat, in that small and in that high-trafficked area, I still would have done the same thing," she said.
I had a neighbor that had one.
It was a big, fat lazy cat.
It spent all day lounging on a patio table in the shade.
Until one day we went to visit and our dog tagged along.
Our dog, a Chow mix, was easily twice the size of this cat.
As soon as the dog came in the gate, the cat let out some kind of scream, jumped off the table and attacked the dog!
It chased the dog all around the fenced in yard a few times until it finally ran out of the gate and the cat resumed its position on the table!...........
Lol, I have seen that, I have seen big tomcats run off German shepherds before. Out of pure being meaner and more aggressive than the dogs. with cats it is no holds barred, while with dogs it is “what will my master think?” lol
Cats don’t have that loyalty and restraint to humans. :)
I have claimed this for years... We didn’t domesticate cats, Cats domesticated us. lol
From that day on, the dog would NOT GO near that yard!..................
VERY YOUNG Bobcat kittens often resemble Domestic Shorthair kittens & many Domestic Shorthair kittens have “short tails” too. - I can easily see why the lady was “confused”.
(When I was in grad school long ago, my GF & I “hand raised” a pair of orphaned Bobcat kittens, for the Arkansas P&WD, until they were old enough to return to the wild. = For several months after the female was “released”, she would return to our house “to visit April” but seldom stayed more than 2-3 hours before heading back to the woods. - We never saw her male litter-mate after the day that he first wanted to leave the house.)
NOTE: There is LITTLE or NO difference in the behavior of common housecats & bobcats. See the book, THE KILLER IN MY BACK GARDEN for more on commonplace behavior of both domestic & wild felines.
(Domestic cats do virtually ALL of the SAME behaviors that TIGERS, LEOPARDS, JAGUARS & other wild felines do. The main difference between you beloved housecat & its wild cousins is SIZE.)
Yours, TMN78247
Was that the commercial for Sears eyeglasses? The lady can’t see well and she calls the ‘kitty’ into her house. Memorable commercial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw-nsbNgQmc
They are fearless, they are all in or all out 24-7 survival mode. They have no inhibitions planted in their training and domestication like Dogs have.
Like I say, they are not domesticated, they just co-habitate with humans. And this includes the larger cats like Puma and Bobcats. That little cat in your house doesn’t know it is not a Puma. In it’s mind it is a Puma in all aspects. :)
I have seen this become a detriment to themselves many times because they overestimated their own size and abilities. Much like many humans I have met along the way. lol
Thank you for sharing that.
“NOTE: There is LITTLE or NO difference in the behavior of common housecats & bobcats. See the book, THE KILLER IN MY BACK GARDEN for more on commonplace behavior of both domestic & wild felines.
(Domestic cats do virtually ALL of the SAME behaviors that TIGERS, LEOPARDS, JAGUARS & other wild felines do. The main difference between you beloved housecat & its wild cousins is SIZE.)”
Yep, absolutely... :)
WELCOME.
Fyi, “my big ‘ole boy” was a half-Siamese & half- Charming Texan, who could easily sit in my hand when my late wife & I “fostered” him at 4 weeks old (His mother weighed about 8#.) to keep the 2 from being put-down.
My kid sister, for some reason known only to her, named him “TIMMY”. - When I asked her WHY, she said, “He looks like a Timmy”.
Once Timmy was weaned, his mother was QUICKLY adopted but NOBODY wanted Timmy, as he was thought to be “funny looking”.
(He looked like an “old school apple-head” Seal-point Siamese with 4 snow white feet & a while blaze down his face.)
Cat people here will understand that within a month-6 weeks that we had “gotten attached to” him.
Timmy kept getting BIGGER & BIGGER & BIGGER until he was over 20 well-muscled pounds at just a few months over a year old.
When he was 3YO, our vet weighed & measured him & found that he was 45.5” from tip of nose to tip of tail, rippled with muscles & weighed 33#.
(Dr. B said, “I’m not at all sure what he is exactly but he’s the BIGGEST !@#$! housecat that I’ve seen in 30 years of practice & he’s healthy as a horse.”)
People, who saw him when shown as a “Household Pet”, started offering us handfuls of cash for Timmy. = Vickie turned down a thousand bucks one afternoon in Ft Worth for him. - She simply said, “NO SALE.” & returned to brushing him.
(Timmy lived to be just over 17YO.)
Yours, TMN78247
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