About a pet bobcat. The author found it injured and seemingly orphaned, on the edge of the Mojave desert where he lived. He took it to a vet and was warned that the animal probably could not be tamed, most people did not have success keeping bobcats as pets. But this one, while he wouldn’t let anyone touch him at first, was fairly calm in the presence of people, and grew to be affectionate and companionable. The vet chalked it up to individual variation and personality, the author assumed it was because he found the bobcat so young. He and his wife let the bobcat roam pretty much at will, not restricting it to being inside the house (or a cage, though he was once accused of that by a neighbor!) When the area they lived in started to get more built-up with increased housing, they decided to move further from town, to a large ranch property. There Trooper (as they named him) could roam widely in his natural habitat. The story of this bobcat living as much of the wild life as he chose to, while freely associating with people, is really absorbing. Especially reading about all the desert wildlife they viewed or had close encounters with. Jackrabbits, snakes, a large owl that once got in the house, a neighbor’s mustang horse, kit foxes, and some more exotic birds (one neighbor kept guinea hens, and a peacock wandered in from who-knows-where) among them. Everyone seemed to hate the coyotes, and there’s a vivid description of Trooper and a younger housecat who had joined them by that point, viciously fighting a coyote in the front yard! There’s plenty of close scrapes, times when the bobcat went missing, causing a lot of worry to his household, they were so fond of him by then. Interesting when other regular-sized cats showed up and wanted to join the household, how they interacted with the bobcat. And the comments of people who saw Trooper for the first time- if they seemed to not recognize his species, the author never let on it was an actual wild bobcat (with comments like “oh, he was just a stray” and “yeah, he’s pretty big!”) Of course the ending is sad because Trooper grows old and meets his end, but it’s very lovely how the author expresses the closeness he felt with the wild cat. He had many remarkable interactions with it that made him feel sure the bobcat understood human speech, and even tried to communicate specific things to them.
I think one of my favorite parts of the book, is where the author meets a gruff neighbor who complains blackly about his kids’ pet cat. Very adroitly the author praised cats, pointing out how unique and special this cat in particular must be (throwing in glowing words for the children too, that they had picked out such an amazing cat) and by the end of their conversation, the unpleasant neighbor was self-convinced that he had a very high quality out-of-the-ordinary cat he should treasure. Author marched away very pleased that he had likely turned that cat’s fate around.
Borrowed from the public library.
3 Responses
I never imagined that a bobcat could become almost domesticated under any circumstance. That is an amazing story, and you have to admire someone who would change home locations for the sake of an animal the way these folks did. I was afraid you were going to say that the bobcat was decimating the local pet population there for a moment. I’ll look for this one.
That’s part of the story that surprised me- instead of the bobcat attacking housecats, he was eventually getting along with some and not only tolerating, but seeming to befriend them. On the other hand, the coyotes were definitely causing a lot of pet deaths. I always thought that was exaggerated before, but this makes it clear to me how determined those predators are.
Coyotes are being really tough on smaller pets in my neighborhood these days, even the ones in fenced back yards are not all that safe from them. It’s very true, and it gets worse and worse over time because there are no natural predators to help control them in suburban areas.