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).

Bobcats Released, Bunnies Beware

Bobcats. Photo by Tom Sanders, Wet Mountain Wildlife.

Two  bobcat kittens (Felis rufus) came into the local rehabilitation shelter a year ago. Actually, at one point there were three, but one released himself, hung around for a time for the free meals, and then went on his way. These two stayed put and ate rats. Lots of rats, delivered by the Rat Man, who was usually me.

I picked up so many rats at the Raptor Center that I felt I needed a steampunk Rat Man costume and a Cockney accent: "Foine rats, madam. None better!"

I always thought the Raptor Center raised their own rats and mice, but they buy them too. They come neatly arranged on a plastic-wrapped foam tray, just like when you buy rats at the supermarket. 

Rats may be ordered by size, up from "pinkies" to "jumbo," or whatever the New York-size ones are called.

But enough about rats. The bobcats are them, grew up, and on the summer solstice they were released on the High Plains near Limon, Colorado. If you were thinking of them as a forest cat, think again — they were found near Limon, and they can make a living on rabbits, rodents, and maybe by scavenging birds knocked out the sky by the renewable electricity project in the background of the video (courtesy of Colorado Parks & Wildlife).

An Injured Bobcat and the Seduction of the "The Mission"

Will s/he make it through the night?

The call came as M. and were finishing supper and planning to watch an episode of Orange is the New Black. A game warden wanted to meet us in the next county to the north with an injured bobcat, which we would take to the rehabilitation center.

There was the usual back and forth over where to rendezvous; then I grabbed a bobcat-sized carrier (medium) and my welder's gloves, and we were off.

Pretty soon we're at the rendezvous point, and here comes this shiny black Colorado Parks & Wildlife truck. And in the back in another carrier is a very displeased bobcat who did not want to move from its carrier into mine, so I had to reach in and grab him.

Touch not the cat bot a glove, as the Scots said. There is some truth to that. It was kind of a "Here, hold my beer" moment, only I had no beer.

I stuffed the unhappy cat into my carrier, and we set off. At the center, we put the carrier in one of the enclosures. The bobcat will get food and water, and in the morning — if it's still alive — its caretakers will decide what to do next.

The backstory was kind of sketchy — someone in the Colorado Springs area had found it apparently dead (hit by a car?) and put it in a pillowcase in order to deposit it in a trash can (!!), when it came to life. Or something like that. Internal injuries?

As we drove to meet the game warden, I was thinking how I am someone who lives in his head a lot, usually having internal dialogs about how this project is behind and how I need to get going on that article and when am I going to fix XYZ around the house and on and on.

And then, whether it is the volunteer fire department or the wildlife transport gig, the radio squawks or the telephone rings and  . . . that's it. Get the appropriate gear and go.

The change is almost relaxing. It's like an altered state. There is only The Mission, and everything else is shoved into the background. I think we humans like that state of being.

A fire call came in last winter for a structure fire at the far edge of our service area, about a 45-minute drive from the firehouse.

One engine had taken off ahead of me, and I was driving a second one, alone— a violation of the procedure that normally required a minimum of two firefighters per engine, except that another guy was coming in his own vehicle to meet me on-scene.

It was just before dawn, and I was going up this lonely winding canyon road with the red and blue lights bouncing off the rocks and cliffs beside the road, like my own private rave.

Dream-like. . . . I could have gone on and on and on.

UPDATE, JULY 25, 2018:  The bobcat was released today in the foothills near the rehabiliation center. The rehabbers said that it took off like a rocket when they opened the door of its carrier.