Did you know that the most populous species of wild cat in the United States is the bobcat? Also known as wildcats, bobcats are about twice the size of your average house cat, with a distinctive bobbed tail and black-spotted, light brown fur. In North Carolina, where we live, there are an estimated 126,000 bobcats, and they live in all 100 of our counties. Bobcats are not endangered; in fact their population is stable or rising!
If you live near woods or swamps, it’s likely there are bobcats not far from you. But you will rarely see one—they’re shy, and tend to stay away from humans or places where a lot of humans live (like cities and suburbs). They’re also nocturnal, and their coloring is the perfect camouflage for the kinds of places they like to live. (The white underneath their tails also helps mama bobcats communicate with their kittens.)
Bobcats are carnivorous and eat rabbits, squirrels, mice, and even small deer and birds. They’re exceptionally stealthy hunters, and have a way of reducing noise by stepping into the footprints of their front paws when stalking prey. They can also run very fast—thirty miles an hour!—and the males have ranges of up to thirty square miles. Except when raising their young, they’re solitary, and take shelter in dens they keep in hollow trees, rock crevices, and underneath dense brush. Their predators include mountain lions, coyotes, foxes, owls, wolves, and humans. To avoid detection, they tend to change their shelter daily, and a mama bobcat will move her kittens between several dens.
Sometimes people encounter a kitten—and might even assume they are are a “regular” kitten (though you should never keep a bobcat as a pet). One way to tell you have a bobcat, and not a domestic cat, is the short, bobbed tail. Bobcats also have spotted (never tabby-striped) fur, and will often have distinctive, black-and-white markings on their ears.
Here’s a news story about a woman who rescued a bobcat kitten from a busy street:
Once, before Bea was born, Richard and I saw a mother bobcat and her three bob-kittens, and ever since then I’ve waited and hoped to glimpse another.
It was early in the morning, and we were getting up to have our coffee. I noticed some movement down our driveway. I looked through our living room window and, because of their size, assumed they were dogs. “I’m gonna go see if those dogs have tags,” I told him as I pulled on my boots. I looked again. "Weird, those puppies are really good at climbing trees.”
Looking more closely, Richard suddenly realized what they were. “No, those are bobcats!” I’ll always be amazed by the human ability to recognize animals we’ve never seen before (well, I guess the found-kitten news story above negates that—but they did eventually figure it out.)
We called the county wildlife biologist, who told us we were lucky. He’d seen a bobcat, and he’d seen kittens, but never the two at once—even after doing his work for twelve years. He said our cats would know how to stay out of their way, and we didn’t need to do anything other than appreciate the chance to watch them.
So for about forty-five minutes, that’s what we did—watch as the mom and her kittens played in the driveway, climbed our trees, and scampered across the ravine on the other side of the drive. Our cats crouched and watched under the benches on our deck. Then they were gone—and I haven’t seen one since.
All wild animals are interesting to watch (even squirrels!), but watching the elusive ones you rarely see is just a magical, heart-stopping experience. Here’s another Youtube video that gives you an idea of what the kittens look like in the wild, and what an adult looks like as well:
So, how can you look for an animal that’s good at avoiding you? One thing you can do is look for places they might like to bed down during the day—we’ve read that they like dense woods and rocky, steep terrain.
You’ve probably seen a deer bed, or round indentation where a deer has slept, in wooded areas. Bobcats also leave indentations, but theirs are smaller and kidney-shaped.
Bobcats have retractable claws (like domestic cats!), so their tracks don’t usually contain claw marks. They look like this:
Bobcat poop, or scat, looks like this:
We have found what we believe to be bobcat scat (though it could be fox scat), but no dens, tracks, or beds.
The other thing you can do is listen for a bobcat’s call at night. Here’s a video that cracks Bea up, every time, because it sounds like the bobcat is screaming “Frog! Frog! Frog!”:
They do eat frogs!
What about you? Have you ever seen a bobcat or a sign that a bobcat has been near your house? Have you ever had the experience of recognizing a wild animal you weren’t expecting to see?
Mamie and Grampa are visiting this weekend, so we’ll miss you on Sunday but will be back next week with a final week of cats!
In the meantime, can you spot any four-leaf clovers in the photo below?
P.S. Here is a joke Bea wrote for Richard’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Richard!):
Q. What is the silliest vegetable?
A. Radicchio!
i absolutely love just watch and appreciate ! btw i found 21 🍀from that patch
Lucky you! I have never seen a bobcat although I have seen tracks on our beach, and have heard them at night. There used to be one or two in the woods around our house, but I haven't heard them in a couple of years. Like whip'o'wills, screech owls and others they seem to have move on. Plenty of coyotes, though.