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So, I’m walking out of the doctor’s office today, feeling smug to have my annual checkup behind me. What do I see parked in front of the building? A pickup with a cat in it. What’s odd about that, you ask?
This was no ordinary cat. This was a full grown (overgrown) bobcat. The driver of the vehicle was coming up the stairs toward me.
“Is that …yours?,” I asked.
“Yup.”
“That’s a …” I really was too stunned to complete the sentence.
“It’s a bobcat. It’s perfectly tame. You can go down and pet it, if you want.” (The windows were rolled down about 4 inches on all sides and the cat was prowling from one side of the cab to the other, as caged cats will do.)
“Did you, ah, raise it?” I asked?
“Yup. I bought it 10 years ago.”
“You…bought it?
“Yes, from a breeder. I picked it out of a litter. It’s perfectly tame. Go ahead and pet it.” The man headed for the inside of the building.
In short order a crowd had gathered and when the man returned, he stepped through the crowd, boldly opened the pickup door, snapped a leash onto said kitty and let it out. “Ya, come on up. You can play with him. He can’t hurt you, he hasn’t got any claws. Here’s how we play,” he said as the cat jumped onto a bench in front of the building clawing at the wood with his missing claws. The man proceeded to flap his hand annoyingly in front of said kitty’s face, eliciting play-growls (or were they real growls?) and big clawless paw swipes.
Mind you, it was amazing to see a bobcat this close up. But the cat is terribly overweight, his fur is thick and dull and looks like it needs a ton a grooming. I wouldn’t be surprised if the poor thing is diabetic.
Why would someone want to do this to an animal that was born to be wild? There’s no accounting for what motivates humans.
Rangewriter 
Oh that’s sad! The poor thing should be out in the wild racing up trees or at least running free. It looks so unhealthy. I always think of bobcats looking considerably more sleek.
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Me too. The people who were ogling the cat kept talking about how big it was, and all I could think of how fat he was.
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Yikes! And yes, it should be out in nature running free.
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I agree!
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what a beautiful creature. Trying to domesticate wild animals like wolves and bobcats in to pets is just not fair.
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I agree 100%.
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No chance of calling the SPCA ? In many areas of Canada, it’s illegal to have a wild animal as a pet. And clearly–this is why.
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Ha. This is Idaho. We are barbarians. We barely got a law passed last season to ban dog fighting. A very backwards state, I’m afraid. I was amazed that of the throng of people who huddled around the cat and the man, no one seemed offended but me. I snapped a few pics mainly to remind myself of my indignation, then crawled aboard my bike and pedaled away while the crowd ewed and ahed. Hmmm…how do you spell that? Anyway…
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No kidding, Linda. A lot of Idahoans are just primitive barbarians.
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I cringed the minute he said it had no claws. De-clawing is awful, in my opinion.
The poor bobcat. I would be excited to see such an animal up close, but afterwards I would realize how sad it was .. to see such an animal up close.
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You got it. My feelings exactly. I flash back to a pair of little bobcat kittens that I saw beside the river one day when I was kayaking. Now THAT was really cool.
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Oh Linda, that really bothers me, too! Did anyone pull off the man’s fingernails? That’s a fine example of ego-run-riot! Poor animal.
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Perhaps the larger issue is that this guy’s cat started as a kitten, part of a litter…there are (or were) a bunch of brothers and sisters that ended up with the same fate….and cousins….and oh I wish it were illegal and enforced.
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This just infuriates the hell out of me. Because this idiot needed to feel like a big man, so different from the rest of us, he spends his money on an animal meant to live in the wild. There are thousands of dogs and cats waiting to be adopted from the animal shelter, but this fool had to have his ego trip. Disgusting. I swear we do need a law to prevent this.
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Yes, I agree. But you know IdaHOans. They don’t like laws and rules and the govmint, so chances are slim. I try to tell myself that, like the wolf pup fiasco, at least this kitty (and the pup) haven’t really known freedom, so maybe it’s like the kid that was born with one leg…they won’t miss what the never had? Except then my other brain kicks in and says, yes, but freedom is in their genes……it’s there deep, deep inside, a driving force….
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You can’t breed or coddle that wildness out in one generation. Sounds like a bad accident waiting to happen.
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Well, since he’s had it for 10 years, perhaps he knows what he’s doing to keep it safe. He did have it on a harness and a leash while out of the vehicle. And minus claws, it’s only got half its arsenal.
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NC has a lot of laws about ‘exotic’ and/or ‘wild’ animals. Even if you rescue one, you are not allowed to keep it. I can’t imagine how someone gets a license to breed wild animals to sell. And bobcats in the wild are spectacular. We have them here, and I’ve been lucky enough to see them prowling around the forest and fields. But at night, they can cry like a baby. It makes me wonder what this one sounds like.
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Well, this is Idaho. We are one of the most backward states in the union. We barely passed legislation to outlaw dog and cock fights recently.
I’ve only seen bobcats once in the wild. A pair of kittens were on the banks of the river while I was kayaking. They were so cute. But cry like a baby, really? This cat, it licked it’s lips a lot and when he was play/fighting with it, it growled. But I didn’t hear anything else.
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We had a dog once that was half Arctic wolf/half Great Dane. His mother was pure Arctic wolf and several generations domesticated, raised by a hippie type of woman living in a canyon outside of Malibu in Southern Cal, and we got him as a puppy from her. We were very fortunate in that he wound up having more of the temperament of a Great Dane than a wolf, but he still had some wild characteristics. We really didn’t know what we were doing when we got him and I wouldn’t do it again, but he was an amazing animal, almost like a brother to the kids, and a real privilege to live with. We learned so much from him.
Frankly, I’ve questioned whether it’s even right to keep dogs and cats as pets. They, too, wind up living such an unnatural life. And then you get into zoos, and rescue/education programs, and facilities like the World Center for Birds of Prey. My heart breaks for those birds every time I go out there, even though I know they’re being caged for a good cause. But still, the individual birds that are kept there never benefit from the larger good cause. On the contrary, they lose everything. They’re caged and get to live no more of a wild and free life than that bobcat.
And then you get into the ethics of raising animals for food, or scientific research, and things just keep on getting grayer. Is it less ethical for that man to have a bobcat as a pet than it is for a pharmaceutical company to keep a chimpanzee or a rabbit or a dog in a lab for some…let’s face it…pretty horrible experimental research?
I don’t know, Linda. It all seems kind of arbitrary to me, and completely different from person to person. I think I would have just wanted to love that bobcat as much as I could for those few, rare moments that I got to see him. For both our sakes.
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You raise some really great and balancing points, Dia. When I was a kid, we had a pet coyote, raised from a pup. That little guy was so sweet, so gentle, so loveable. He’d lead me around the yard with his jaws gently clamped around my forearm and he played with our dog’s puppies for hours at a time and allowed them to steal food from his bowl. But, wild was in his DNA. Our housecats and housedogs have had thousands of years of domestication to alter their behavior and their needs. To breed and sell a wild species of any kind seems to me to be completely unethical. But, I agree that keeping animals in lab cages and doing god only knows what to them is just as unethical, as are huge feedlots and chicken or pig operations. Lets face it humans feel entitled to rule the animal kingdom in any way they want, simply because the can. (we, I should say….I am human.)
It was a thrill to see this guy, but my heart broke at the same time. Just as my heart broke for the cougar that strayed into town a few weeks ago. As for the WCfBoP, I think of the condors they have nursed back to viability and the Peregrines that we have nesting right here in town (http://www.peregrinefund.org/subsites/webcam-peregrine/) and I think that at least good comes of those sad situations. Zoos….yes, I agree. It’s a mixed and heartbreaking bag. And who are we to judge what we see? Perhaps the bobcat really is happy with his “mate.” That man has nurtured and protected him since kittenhood and there’s undoubtedly a bond. That’s why I kept my trap shut and didn’t say any of the things that were flying around in my head at the time.
Thanks for adding another dimension to the discussion, here. 😉
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A coyote!! Wow…that reminds me of a book I read a while back called The Daily Coyote. A really interesting story about a woman in Wyoming (I think) whose boyfriend surprised her with an abandoned coyote pup to raise and the whole ethical dilemma it presented her with, and her attempts to raise it with respect for it’s wild instincts. She wound up keeping a blog about it and publishing a daily photo of the pup as it grew up (it’s still going if you’re interested, the pics are darling…http://www.dailycoyote.net/) and evidently this whole discussion about the ethics of keeping wild animals took over the comment section at one point. She eventually wrote the book off the whole experience (some publisher saw the blog and contacted her! Back in the old days…) and reading the book reinforced my general feeling that I would never want to have an animal with wild instincts for a pet again. I’m actually against this trend of breeding wild animals for pets or food (elk, salmon, and buffalo farms, etc.) or…the absolute worst…these “hunting” reserves in Texas where they keep exotic animals fenced in for clients to come and shoot. (Do they cut up their steak and wipe their behinds for them, too? For godsakes.) See? I can pass judgement with the best of them. 🙂
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Thanks for including that link. Very interesting. I’m with you on the damned game farms.
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This all is new information for me. I don’t know much about cats. 🙂 But after reading your post, I would have to agree with you. It is freakishly so big.
🙂
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Bobcats, sometimes referred to as lynx or “wildcat” are native to North America, particularly the western US. They are beautiful, mostly nocturnal hunters with distinctive tufts of fur sprouting from their ears and a naturally bobbed tail…hence the name. I don’t believe the cat I saw was unusually tall for its species, but it was unusually broad. Not enough energy spent hunting, I presume.
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BTW, I checked kd’s book this morning and it was sitting at #11 in it’s category of Adventurers and Explorers. I wonder if it was even higher earlier? In any case, #11 makes it an Amazon bestseller in it’s category, a little blip that you might want to Tweet and/or blog about, and possibly add into the product description for marketing. Definitely good PR for the book!
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I agree with you that it should be running wild. That said, if the guy has had it for ten years, to remove it now would probably be more cruel. He seems to love it, no?
As for overfeeding – I suspect it’s the same mentality as people who overfeed their children: they think they’re being good to them, but they’re not.
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Oh yes, I agree that the animal is in the best place now. Heck, it has no toenails! It couldn’t survive on it’s own and the only life it’s known has been life with this guy. It’s weight is probably mostly due to lack of exercise. Think of how much exercise they must get when they have to scrounge up their own food. I just wish people would leave wild alone and not presume that by mere kindness and love they can tame the “wild” out of a predator. It’s seems so vain to me.
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That is sad. Was it a “V” license plate? A couple of years ago in McCall at the Winter Carnival, a man was driving down main street there witih a bobcat on the front seat next to him. He stopped and a lot of people went up to peer in the window. Wonder if it was the same man?
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Rae Ann, yes it was a Valley County, a small black pickup, in fact. Probably the same guy.
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We have a photo of the cat in the pick up; I think it was black.
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Wow!
That’s amazing! I love bobcats, they’re cute =D But like you, I don’t understand that obsession with having animals that are way out of their habitat.
People bring birds from the jungle of I don’t know where, they want bobcats, they want this, they want that. Animals are not cars or furniture. I love penguins, but I wouldn’t bring one here where the conditions aren’t optimum for them. They live where they live for a reason. Because of the weather, because of certain foods, etc., if they didn’t need certain things, they would probably be here, maybe.
It’s just that we live in a world where we have to show off. The more you show off, the cooler you are. I don’t know why we are such idiots that we think that way. We are destroying the balance of the planet, and we’ll regret it when it is way too late.
(One more thing: I replied to your last comment on my blog, I don’t know if you noticed, it’s just that it didn’t let me reply to it, there was no button)
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Thanks, I did get that comment you left. 😉
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Linda, I understand that in many ways your state is averse to laws that may be common elsewhere. But Idaho has state and national parks, each with its own rules and means of enforcing them. I would think owning a wild animal would fall into some category somewhere.
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Charles there are local regualtions about pets. For example, in the city of Boise you are supposed to have a kennel license to have more than 2 dogs, I think. And you are not allowed to have farm animals in town….unless you have grandfather rights or are in a subdivision that allows horses, etc. But this man lives in a more rural setting, north of Boise. I don’t imagine there are any regulations agains owning a wild animal. And apparently, there are no regulations against breeding wild animals, if you have adequate facilities in which to keep them.
I don’t believe the guy is breaking any laws or ordinances. And I suspect that he justifies his bobcat by taking it to schools for “educational” purposes. He said something about all the kids who’ve petted the critter. I’m sure the man loves his big cat and that may even be reciprocated. I’m just not convinced that it is ethical to keep any wild animal in a domestic situation just because we “love” it.
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