Secrets of wild cats » Bobcat

Bobcat kittens get second chance

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 04:12:25 +0000

Tuesday, 01 Jun 2010, 10:20 PM EDT
TAMPA – Three baby bobcats arrived at Big Cat Rescue last month with an uncertain future. But now, they’re thriving, thanks to a stray that treats them just like her own. “Bobbi” became a surrogate mom to three little orphaned bobcats handed over to a vet by an Alabama hunter.
“He asked the veterinary hospital if they could raise the baby bobcats so he could give them to his kids,” said veterinarian Liz Wynn, with Big Cat Rescue. An internet search landed them at Big Cat Rescue, a sanctuary where they have seen this situation, and helped out before.
“In the past, we’ve raised an orphaned baby bobcat by using a domestic cat surrogate, so we knew it could work if we could find the right mommy,” Wynn said. They found her at Suncoast Animal League: a former stray who somehow knew these little ones really need her:
“When they come up to her, she just rolls over and lets them nurse and loves on them, so she’s doing a good job,” Wynn said.
They’re still nursing, but eating ground turkey too. Armed with sharp little teeth and claws, they’ll stay with Bobbi — until they start acting like bobcats.
In the meantime, Big Cat staff minimize human contact:
“We don’t talk around them. We don’t hug or cuddle them. We just do what we need to do and stop so they don’t get used to people.” Wynn said. “We don’t want them to think that people are their friends. We want them to be afraid of people.”
Wynn said that hands-off approach will improve the odds that the bobcats will make it in the wild.
They’ll have to learn to catch their own food before they can be released, and that would be in about a year or so back in their native Alabama.

http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/news/local/hillsborough/bobcat-kittens-get-second-chance-06012010

Animal Rescue Site Enables Bobcat Rescue

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:12:25 +0000

A bobcat with a broken leg nears starvation so his human neighbors called Big Cat Rescue to come to his aid. Voting for Big Cat Rescue at the Animal Rescue Site is a great way to help rescue bobcats like this at no cost to you.

Posted byBigCatRescueat12:51 PM

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Davenport Bobcat Rescue Effort

admin — Mon, 24 May 2010 10:52:25 +0000

At 2 PM I was working with Gale, Darren and Matt to return Cloe the
snow leopard back to her enclosure when a call came in from a man who said that he had seen a bobcat in his backyard and he was concerned about whether or not the bobcat would hurt his pets and children. He was so frightened that he said when he saw the bobcat it went running in one direction and he went running in the other.

I didn’t think too much about it but then about an hour later I got another call from a woman who had almost the exact same tale; that she had seen about cat in her backyard and she was worried about her grand-babies. Just like with the guy before I explained to her why this was such a great thing to have a bobcat in the neighborhood. I explained how they help keep down the rabies vectors like the raccoons and possums and rats. I told them that they should count themselves lucky to have a bobcat as a neighbor.

The woman insisted that the bobcat was injured and I really felt like she was putting me on because she thought that was the only way that I was going to come out to relocate this bobcat. I went into great detail with her about how under Florida law once the bobcat is rehabilitated we have to take him back to the same place that we found him.

She kept insisting that the bobcat was truly injured and that his back leg looked like it was broken. I loaded up the truck, with the largest Hav-a-heart trap, nets, a catch pole and some chicks and drove and hour and a half to Davenport to check out the situation. Through the entire trip it was just pouring down rain and I wondered what the chances of finding a bobcat in a rainstorm were going to be like when I got there.

Upon arrival it quit raining and Dora flagged me down when she saw the Big Cat Rescue logo on my truck. She said that animal control had come and gone and she didn’t know whether or not they had been successful because she had seen the bobcat run across the street, into an orange grove, and under the neighbor’s house.

The house was surrounded by a locked fence. I had to drive around the block a couple of times looking for some way to be able to access the property or get the neighbors attention and had been unable to do. I got out on foot with my binoculars and was creeping around in the shrubbery trying to see under the house which was a fair distance from the fence.

A neighbor came over and concurred with the caller that the bobcat did in fact have a broken back leg. He said the bobcat had been hanging around for quite a while and was quite emaciated. The cat was in such miserable condition that he had even considered putting the bobcat out of his misery. Meanwhile he had set out cat food for the cat in hopes that he could gain the cat’s trust enough to get him help.

The bobcat had crawled into about a six-inch space underneath an old frame home. The man agreed to check the trap periodically and make sure that we hadn’t caught any of the roaming cats in the neighborhood or raccoons. He said that he would set them loose and reset the trap as needed and since he was right next door he can check the track every couple of hours so we’ll just wait and see whether or not he’s successful in catching the bobcat.