Odd kitty--any ideas?

W

WNYstalker

Member
Alright all...

Driving home from work and saw a good sized cat on the side fo the road....too big for the farm cat. Pulled around and got confused in a hurry. Weighed 19 pounds on the fish scale from my tackle box ( 'bout time it got some use this year...) It had a bobbed tail around six inches in length. The pelt was more of a sable/buckskin color, and had very little variation or pattern. There was no ear tufting or bearded appearance that I would have expected in a bobcat.

This cat was lean, and well muscled. I have been looking at pictures of bobcats on this website for a long time....and it didn't look like a bobcat in the traditional sense. On the other hand...I've seen alot of feral cats, and it was way to big to have been one of them either.

sorry...no pics. I went back with a camera and the cat was gone....less than an hour later.

and no.....I don't think it was a bobcat-mt. lion hybrid /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Thoughts?

WNYS
 
Yrs ago, I caught a feral Gray Tomcat in a waterway set. This "domestic" cat was the biggest I've [ever] seen. He kept lunging @ me, during our standoff [no firearm]. Finally I got the upper hand [narrow creek channel].

Cat's head & body was the size of a Bobcat. Very little body fat, all muscle & bone. I never weighed him. But estimated over 20lbs IMB.
 
My best guess would be female bobcat, summer coat. Some individual bobcats have no ear tufts and very little spotting. Keep in mind when looking at posted photos that Southwestern bobcats tend to have more contrasty coats than Eastern and Northern cats; too, there's a lot of variation even within local populations of bobcats.

(BTW, I said female due to no mention of "mutton chops".)

As Marlin 25-36 said, if you noticed a prominent white patche on the back of each, that'd be a confirming field mark for a bobcat.

Short of that, it might have been a feral cat/bobcat hybrid.

LionHo
 

Also, there isn't much tip on the ears sometimes. If you look close at the picture you can see a small hair tip. It isn't very long and this cat was in full winter coat last January.

bb2fe0ed.jpg
 
Hey all,

Sorry for the delay, but I've been away from the computer for a few days.

the cat had light patches on the back of both ears...but no tufts at all. The tail was about five or six inches long, darker--almost black at the tip, and lighter colored on the bottom.

I think there were some black markings on the face..around the eyes and around the whiskers. I don't really remember seeing anything that looked like the "contrasty" spots that make me think "Bobcat"

Also...it was a female, to answer the question in the above post.

Thanks for all of you insights.

WNYStalker
 
I shot a female bobcat a couple of years ago, that had no ear tuffs, But she was well spotted..I have seen Bobcats in the past that had hardly any spots to thier coats. Also I have seen a few feral cats that were way bigger than the largest bobcat I have seen.

Last year we had a feral cat nearly attack us while we were calling. I wished we would have had a chance to shoot this cat, but he was gone in a flash.
 
Quote:
Maybe a large feral Manx cat? They have short tails and legs a little like a rabbit.T.20

thats probly what it was
 
Despite this being a resurection of an old post, my vote was that it WAS a bobcat.They're pretty common in that area, and the description of the ear backs and tail,sound extremely "boblike".As a taxidermist for a good many years, I would purchase cats from all around the country, and can say that compared to most areas of the country, our northeastern cats exibit no such spotting along the darker areas of the hide,back and sides.They're predominantly a mix of tannish,gray-brown.Of course the underside of the legs and bellies exibit the typical spotting.Here's a couple of pics of a very large NY bobcat,note the back and sides are much darker,with no spotting evident...
NYBobcat2.jpg

NYBobcat.jpg
 
Back
Top