Cute and cuddly, for now

When a Bath County couple happened upon what appeared to be a cuddly male feline alongside Route 29 last spring, they thought they’d found a new family member.
After two weeks, the couple noticed distinctive markings which revealed that their new pet was a bobcat destined to grow to about 25 pounds. That’s when the cat made the trip to the Virginia Wildlife Center in Waynesboro.
“He was just impossibly cute when he was here,” said Edward Clark, president of the Virginia Wildlife Center, “but when he weighs 30 pounds and eats the poodle, the charm’s gonna wear off.”
The bobcat kitten spent two months at the Wildlife Center before being shipped recently to its permanent home, Maymont Nature Park in Richmond.
The animal’s discovery demonstrates the complexities and hazards of humans mixing with wild animals. The couple sustained the kitten on Friskies cat food and cow’s milk before recognizing that its appearance belied its behavior.
“It acted for all the world like a cat, but as it started to get more of its mature coloration ... they realized they had a bobcat and that was against the law and not something,” they could keep, Clark said.
By then, the typically territorial and “ferocious” feline had become utterly domesticated – and unable to return to the wild.
“He had spent too much time in captivity when he was young, and should have been imprinting and focusing and bonding with his mother and with his siblings,” Clark said.
Instead: “He was being treated like Fluffy the Cat. We’ve had others [bobcats] that over time, once you stop messing with them, their instincts kick back in. But this guy, you’d walk in the room and he’d start to purr. Even if he could have been taught to hunt and do normal bobcat stuff, he isn’t afraid of people and that would undoubtedly be fatal for him.”
Bobcats are hunted for sport and trapped for their fur. Their habitat extends through most of the continental United States, stretching from Oregon to the swamps of Florida.
The size of the bobcat population is unknown because few states track the data, but the animals are prevalent. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 20 years ago estimated the number between 700,000 and 1.5 million. The animal remains common in the South, conservationists say, despite being hunted here.
Bobcats frequently are found in Augusta County, according to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Bath and Augusta are home to high concentrations of bobcats, the agency’s Web site says.
The animal found in Bath made the trip to Maymont’s 40-acre wildlife park along with a bald eagle. The rescuer of the bird performed an impromptu surgery, clipping a broken wing and destroying its ability to fly. The Wildlife Center is the only facility in Virginia authorized to care for eagles, Clark said.
Bobcats are not frequent visitors to the center — one or two are treated there each year — but they are plentiful in this neck of the woods, Clark said.
“They are found in just about every part of Virginia,” he said. “Certainly, they are all over the mountains around here.”