August 27, 2014 (Wednesday)
In yesterday’s blog I said that one of our cats had brought a litter of Bobcats to our back yard. This was a long time ago. I don’t remember the exact year, but it was while we still had our old Datsun sedan, which places the event probably in the late 1970’s. I’ll tell you the reason for remembering the Datsun a little later in this blog.
This particular cat was black with a white spot on her neck, and always had a wild streak. She would let no one pet her or pick her up except our daughter, Dianna, who had a way with cats. Dianna could pick her up, cradle her against her chest, and watch her go to sleep–on her back, no less. But the feline was skittish with other family members, and especially with our little dog, who loved to chase her around the yard until she jumped the big wooden fence, hiding the woods beyond. One day she had all she could take from that puppy, jumped the fence, and did not return. Since she was already sort of wild anyway, she probably adapted easily to life in the woods. Every once in a while we would see her scrounging around the garbage cans.
Then after about a year of infrequent sightings, we began seeing her more often, and it was evident she was pregnant. The sightings stopped until Wanda spotted her in the woods in a lot behind our house. She had a litter of kittens. Wait, those are not kittens. What are they? BOBCATS!
Had she lost her litter and adopted an orphaned litter of Bobcats? Could it have been possible that she was the real mother of these wild animals? They looked like kittens when first seen, but closer examination showed big muscular frames with huge paws fitted with dangerous claws, bobbed tail, distinctive ears and faces that could be hideously contorted to scare away predators. Click here to find out how to identify them.
Wanda prepared a place for the momma cat with her litter of Bobcats in the well house in the back yard. They terrorized anyone who dared open the door to peek. And they grew. They started venturing outside the well house. They explored the yard and driveway, seeking a hiding place under the hood of the Datsun, which had a little shelf on the firewall just made for Bobcats and the like. So when I drove away, I unknowingly had a passenger under the hood. As soon as I slowed down and turned a corner, out the cat came, running as fast as he could into an unsuspecting neighborhood. All of them met that fate or another, and the momma cat disappeared back into the wild, never to be seen again.
I think I’ve already written a blog about this, but I’ll be 83 soon, and have been known to repeat stories now and then. Just ask my kids.
You can believe me about the Bobcats or not, but as Forrest Gump says, “That’s all I have to say about that.”
