When David Loop, president of cat rescue Sierra Pacific Furbabies, received a call last week from a hiker who’d found a kitten, he wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary. But when he opened up the box the “kitten” came in, he was surprised that the animal in the box actually wasn’t a cat at all — he was a bobcat.
Loop works with cats and kittens every day. So it was immediately obvious to him that he was dealing with a wild animal, not a house cat.
“The ears, the tail, the markings — everything — resembled a baby bobcat,” Loop told The Dodo.
That being said, he doesn’t blame the hiker who mistook the baby for a kitten. At such a young age, kittens and young bobcats do look incredibly similar.
Loop made it clear that despite their visual similarities, kittens and bobcats have very different needs. Rescued kittens belong in loving homes, while rescued bobcats need to return to the wild. The moment he realized he had a bobcat on his hands, he contacted a wildlife rehabilitator.
“Wildlife is wildlife, and we have to leave it up to the experts,” Loop said.
Leslie Triplett, licensed wildlife rehabilitation specialist and head of Pond Digger Ranch Wildlife Rehabilitation, took over from there.
She explained that bobcats never leave their dens alone at such a young age unless something has gone wrong. Since the 5-week-old bobcat had been wandering around alone on the trail, following the hiker, it’s very likely something happened to his mother.
“He’s very small, so he’s lucky [the] hiker found him when he did,” Triplett told The Dodo.
She emphasized that Loop did the right thing by immediately bringing the bobcat to a wildlife rehabilitator. Because of Loop’s quick thinking, the bobcat didn’t become habituated to humans and will be able to be released back into the wild once he’s grown up a little more.
Before rescued wild animals can be released into nature, they need to spend time with members of their own species. So Triplett transferred him to a rescue that had another young bobcat he could bond with.
Now, the kitten is busy learning all he needs to know about being a bobcat before transitioning back into his wild home.
