June 26, 2020

I Am not a Pixie-bob! I Am a Wild Cat!

A yummy rat makes travel time go by more quickly.  Our neighbor
wildlife rehabbers like to put stuffed toys with small mammals for companionship.
Some where in southeastern Colorado, someone "found" a bobcat kitten in an abandoned house out on the prairie. (In other words, the kitten was probably part of a litter, with a mother, but was snatched.)

The "finder" took her back to town, where she was kept as a pet and described to everyone as a "pixie-bob."

I never heard of a "pixie-bob" before this week. Apparently it's a bobtailed domestic cat breed that (allegedly) has some bobcat genetics, but don't waste your money on a DNA test.

Someone tipped off a Colorado Parks and Wildlife district wildlife manager. Keeping wild mammals as pets is totally illegal, unless you're a rehabilitator or a licensed zoo, etc. Since her mother's location was unknown, a wildlife rehabilitation center was the only place for her.

M. and I, the volunteer wildlife transporters, met him partway between here and there and picked her up in a busy big-box store parking lot. Is there anything more dissonant than handling a wild animal amid acres of asphalt, rumbing motors, truck traffic on the interstate highway, the smell of fast-food restaurant grease, and a hot summer wind?

Back in the foothills of home, we left her with the rehabbers for a short stay. They had raised three bobcat kittens over this past winter — those three were released earlier this summer.

But one kitten is a lonely kitten. A rehabber in Douglas County already had two kittens and was happy to take a third.

By now we were calling this one "Pixie-bob," and she had been happily eating elk and chicken bits in a Tuff Shed-turned nursery, but it was time for her (wriggling wildly) to go back into the blue carrier and travel more than an hour northward. She got a freshly thawed rat to occupy her on the trip; when I cleaned the carrier afterwards, nothing was left but a short section of the tail. Crunch crunch!

With any luck, this will be her next May or June:

Bobcat release (Colorado Parks and Wildlife).

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