Chapter 6

A Different Kind of Cat

The most abundant wild member of the cat family in Nova Scotia is the bobcat. In fact, the province is recognized as the best bobcat habitat in Canada, with about one for every twelve square kilometres. Usually, a bobcat is twice the size of a domestic cat, with a weight between eleven and fourteen kilograms, but on the edges of towns and cities, where feral domestic cats and bobcats overlap their range, it is not uncommon at night, dusk, or dawn for large domestics and small bobcats to be mistaken for each other.

Clifford

The couple’s first reaction was surprise, then pity. They were out for an evening drive on a dirt road through the woods behind Lake Echo when they saw one more example of humankind’s inhumanity toward animals. A single lost kitten, at best three weeks old, sat beside the road looking very frightened. Knowing the animal could not survive here where a callous owner had obviously dumped him, they scooped up the terrified tyke, by this point wild with fear, and took him home with them to raise as a pet.

They soon realized their mistake. Quick razor-sharp claws and knife-like teeth, coupled with a disposition wilder than a housecat on its worst day, told them that what they had brought into their home was a young bobcat. They called Hope for Wildlife.

“He was feisty,” remembered Hope Swinimer. “Even though he was just tiny and still had his blue eyes, he knew enough to be scared of people. He was just terrified. They soon figured it out and gave me a call, so we went and collected the little spitfire.”

For Swinimer, there were several important questions she would have liked answers to but knew she would never get. Why was the kitten beside the road? Had the couple interrupted the mother cat moving him? Was the mother dead? If so, what had happened to her and how long had her baby been on its own? Swinimer had what she thought was a best guess on the matter.

“We just don’t know. Maybe this was a case where people should not have interfered. But the cat was not using his hind end very well, and that is usually a sign of rickets and poor diet. If it had been with its mom right up to that point, I don’t think it would have had that problem. Something tells me that little one must have been separated from its mom for longer than a day. The mother could have been hit by a car and gone off to die in the woods.”

For a bobcat, this was a late baby. He was found the first week in August, and his kind usually gives birth anywhere from February to late May. Bobcats are single parent families and their litters are small, with only one or two kittens. This helps the mother, who raises them on her own. Their versatile diet is also an asset to her. A bobcat will kill and eat anything from a large insect to a small deer, although its food of choice in Nova Scotia is the snowshoe hare.

The workers at Hope for Wildlife were surprised at how small the cat was for so late in the year. It was obvious there had been a diet problem, but he showed no interest in any of the food offered him at Swinimer’s shelter, leaving her with only one option. It would require two brave people.

“We had to force feed him at first. We needed a good, nutritious food to help with the rickets, so we were syringe feeding him, forcing it down his throat,” she said.

The job fell to Swinimer and her friend Reid. They had in the past dealt with several aggressive animals, but this one, despite his tiny size, proved a handful.

Clifford and Gretel.

“We had to wear heavy, heavy gloves, or else we would get bitten quite badly, even though he was just a little thing,” Swinimer admitted.

Hope for Wildlife had fostered predators before and knew that they required special treatment, even one this size. One important thing was to isolate the young bobcat, now called Clifford, from the types of birds and animals that would one day become his prey. His age and health were also potential problems, so Swinimer moved him to her house, away from the rehabilitation centre and regular pens. It wasn’t the first time she had done this with an animal, and she set up a very quiet room where no one went in and out. Her house also had connecting outside pens, if needed. They were for special cases, and this was a special case. On several levels, for several reasons, imprinting is a concern when dealing with a young predator such as a bobcat.

“There are two kinds of imprinting. There is imprinting where they come to think humans are their family, and they don’t know they are a cat. Then there is the type of imprinting where they just bond with one person and hate everybody else. That’s not so dangerous. That’s not such a bad thing. I was hoping if Reid and I were the only ones caring for Clifford, he’d be fearful of everyone else to a certain degree. Maybe there wasn’t too much logic to that, but I thought it was for the best,” explained Swinimer.

In the Beginning

The bobcat’s ancestor, an ancient predecessor of the Eurasian lynx, first came to North America across the Bering Land Bridge about 2.5 million years ago. Glaciers eventually confined that cat population to the southern half of North America, where it evolved into the modern bobcat. Meanwhile, another migration of lynx crossed from Asia but was confined to what is now Alaska by the same glaciations. This migration evolved into the Canadian lynx.

In his first weeks at the rehabilitation centre, the little bobcat was not called Clifford. In fact, according to a vote taken by visitors to the Hope for Wildlife open house that August, he still isn’t, wherever he is. Clifford was Swinimer’s name choice but her companion, Reid, preferred Cecil. For a while, both were used, neither side would give in, and it was put to what was supposed to be a binding vote by open-house guests. Cecil won by a landslide, so the cat became Clifford.

“Owning the facility has some privileges,” Swinimer explained.

Clifford grew up in Swinimer’s house, totally isolated from the Hope for Wildlife world that surrounded it. There was, however, another animal that resided there, the pine marten Gretel and as a mature, female predator, albeit from a distinctly smaller species, Gretel took it upon herself to teach the bobcat kitten his place.

“At first the pine marten was bigger than the bobcat,” Swinimer remembered, “so Gretel would boss him and chase him, and I let them interact because it was stimulation, and also it taught him play, which I’m sure his mother would have done. At first it was fun to watch. Gretel would be really mean to Clifford, grab his ears and really yank him around the room.”

Then one day everything changed, and the two never played together again. Swinimer didn’t see what happened, but she had a good idea why the behavour shifted.

“I think Clifford just said ‘Okay, I’m bigger than you now, I’m the boss!’ and he let her know that. From that day forward, Gretel was scared to even go near Clifford.”

As Clifford slowly matured, it was easy to see that while his species and domestic cats had been sundered for millions of years, there were still some similarities. Bobcats respond to affection like cats do. They purr, groom, and like having their ears scratched, Swinimer observed. They also have similar temperaments. From her work as manager of the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital, Swinimer knew very well that cats are “independent, they don’t want to be bossed by anyone.” Clifford was no different. Hope for Wildlife handled him cautiously because they knew as he grew more mature, he would react aggressively if forced to do something he didn’t want to. Any attempt to discipline or punish him would have resulted in a very violent confrontation, so that was avoided.

This became more and more of an issue because bobcats stay with their mothers for a full year. They overwinter as part of a family group, learning to be adults by hunting, which meant Clifford would be much more mature than most Hope for Wildlife fosterlings when his release time came. Swinimer and her crew were going to have to deal with an adolescent male bobcat. Eventually, he grew to the point where he was moved regularly from the house to a large outside unit, and as time went by, that became a problem.

“He was strong and dominant from the start,” according to Swinimer, “and that was good, because it would help him survive in the wild. But he could do serious harm, and just because he knew us, didn’t mean he would spare us. He could rip us to pieces if we didn’t know what we were doing. Eighty per cent of the time he was fine, because we weren’t trying to force him to do anything. It was just when you tried to get him into a unit, or move him when he didn’t want to be moved.”

But Clifford had to be moved. If he was going to be released the following spring, learning to hunt became a priority, as did getting used to outdoor weather. Then there was the matter of visitors to Swinimer’s home. Clifford, as a permanent house guest who had known discipline only from a pine marten, and then only until he outgrew it, was very demanding on humans who dropped in. If they came into his domain, they could either pet him or serve his other need: they could be his scratching post. Deirdre Dwyer was working with Hope for Wildlife that summer, helping set up their new education centre. She remembers her frequent visits to the house for conversations with Swinimer.

A maturing Clifford, aloof in the barn rafters.

“I used to wear shorts, and I’d come back from the house with my legs covered in scratches,” she said. “If Clifford wanted something, he let you know. I mentioned to Hope that she would soon have to look at getting him out of there, and she agreed.”

Learning to hunt was another major priority. As a cat from the wild, Clifford obviously had the instincts to kill his food. Even domestic cats, his far distant cousins, still have those, and will readily exercise them on birds and backyard rodents when the chance arises.

However, Clifford not only needed to learn that he had those instincts, he required practice hunting so that he could support himself when he was set free. A dead rat served by a Hope for Wildlife volunteer was supper, but take away that human and a young bobcat had to realize that food came alive, not thawed. He needed to hone his hunting and killing skills so he could provide for himself. Clifford could become a killer—that was undeniable—but required something to practice on.

“We very seldom use live prey, but there are cases where we have to. Young birds of prey must learn to hunt, so you just have to do this kind of thing,” explained Swinimer. “The same with bobcats. Most of the time, we’re off the hook on this. You don’t have to teach a squirrel how to eat. You don’t have to teach a white-tailed deer. But there are certain species you do, so you have to go through that process.”

Swinimer did not ask many volunteers to take part in live feedings. She and Reid handled it themselves. For the most part, Clifford’s food was rats and mice, but bobcats have a very diverse diet, and Clifford needed to recognize the edible creatures he might meet in the wild. Injured birds brought to the shelter that were obviously suffering and could not be saved were readily available.

“Death is quick with a bobcat,” Swinimer said. “If it meant choosing between sticking a bird with a needle or a quick death in a bobcat unit, at least it would serve a natural purpose.”

A typical adolescent, Clifford showed no willingness to cooperate in his education, and this sometimes proved not only exasperating but also humourous. On one occasion, a local farmer let it be known that some of his hens had stopped laying and he was going to wring their necks. Would Hope for Wildlife like dead chickens for the animals? Swinimer and her team immediately thought of Clifford. He had not yet killed for food, but if locked in a cage with a live chicken, could finish it much more humanely than a neck-wringing would, plus it would break the food kill barrier. On a winter’s evening, Swinimer slipped one of the farmer’s chickens into the bobcat cage and locked the door. She had given Clifford his big chance. The next morning she returned to find a very alive hen casually walking up and down one side of the cage, pecking, with an indifferent Clifford on the other side. The chicken was retrieved, nicknamed “Lucky” on the spot, and became an untouchable guest for the rest of her days, popular with children visiting the rehab centre.

Clifford did learn to hunt that first winter, but in typical cat fashion, he did it his way. Swinimer was watching him in his pen one day when a red squirrel arrived outside, noted Clifford’s food, and darted inside for a treat. It was his last attempted theft. Clifford was on him in a flash, so quickly and efficiently that Swinimer felt sure it could not have been his first kill. In any case, she was satisfied that her bobcat boy had grown into a predator and found it somewhat pleasing that after months of her trying to find a thing for him to kill, he had done it on his own.

The arrival of Clifford as a mature predator corresponded with spring and the season of new babies, and while he had been one of those handfuls himself the previous year, he now stood apart. That year’s orphans were potential food for a second year bobcat, and they seemed to sense the danger in him. For the new volunteers arriving at Hope for Wildlife, the experience was similar. It was the season of newborn cuteness, and sweet little fox kits, fawns, and raccoon cubs were what they expected. Laura Bond was one of the new workers learning how to clean cages.

“I’ll always remember the awe I felt on my first day of work coming face to face with a full grown bobcat,” she said. “When Allison told me she was taking me into the cage of a bobcat kitten, I thought Clifford would be about the size of a house cat, not the size of a large dog. When he came out to investigate who was coming onto his territory, I remember thinking, ‘You have got to be kidding me. I’m supposed to clean the cage with this in it?’ It is very unusual for me to get nervous around any animal. I usually have no fear. But at that point I wanted to yell at Allison, to ask her if she realized she was standing two feet away from a full grown bobcat!”

Summer came, Clifford was a full year old, and according to the way of bobcats everywhere, it was time for him to go off to make his own life. Of course, there were fears at Hope for Wildlife. They had done their best, but he had not been raised by another bobcat and all his humans could do was hope that what they were capable of would be enough. To cushion the blow, Swinimer and company decided on a soft release.

With a hard release, an animal is taken far from people into a wilderness area and set free to cope on its own. This was commonly done with deer. However, in a soft release, the animal is let go into familiar surroundings, in Clifford’s case the Seaforth facility where he had been raised. The gate to his pen remained open so he could return if he ran into a problem, and food was provided in case his initial hunting didn’t go well. Since Clifford had spent so many of his first weeks in the farmhouse, a pantry window was raised every night, just in case.

It would be a mistake to say that Clifford had become a pet and that was why a soft release was chosen. He had required personal attention as a predator, and over two years that had likely involved some degree of imprinting, but that had been minimized, and it was never Swinimer’s intention to keep him permanently. There were, and still are, places in North America where that can be done with bobcats, but they don’t make good pets. A bobcat is a nocturnal predator and as a house pet it will roam all night and hunt anything that moves. The end result is not good for other pets. A mature bobcat marks its territory with urine, not popular with most people. Strangers in a house with a resident bobcat must be very careful because these cats are extremely territorial, and twice as large as a feline. Then there’s the matter of health. If your pet injures someone, you can always take them to a hospital. For domestic pets, you take them to a vet, but most veterinarians won’t treat bobcats.

A bobcat at play shows that, despite millions of years apart, it is still in many ways close to its domestic cousin.

Behind the Seaforth farm are miles of wilderness, a landscape filled with forests, marshes, lakes, hills, and rivers—perfect bobcat habitat. Sooner or later, as his confidence grew, everyone believed Clifford would feel the pull of the wilderness.

“It was funny how it worked out,” said Swinimer. “He hung around for a good month or more. Almost every day, we would see him. Sometimes he would come up to us, but oftentimes he would be evasive and not approach. But many, many nights he’d come in around two o’clock through the pantry window, up to our bedroom, jump on the bed, give us a purr and a lick, sleep for a while, and then be gone in the morning before we woke up. We’d always know he’d been there, because he’d wake us up.”

The Lynx Family

There are today four species in the lynx family of cats, including the Eurasian lynx, Spanish lynx, Canadian lynx, and bobcat. The Eurasian lynx is by far the largest, averaging twenty-five kilograms, with its Siberian sub-species sometimes reaching forty kilograms. The bobcat is the smallest at about thirteen kilograms.

By late summer, Clifford was a young bobcat in his prime. Swinimer would still see him early every morning when she fed the deer in their pen, and more than for any other human, he still showed her respect, friendship, and trust. There came a day, however, when even that changed. One morning when she went to the deer pens, there was Clifford, just outside the wire, stalking the deer. He was in full predator mode, and the herd’s natural fear of a carnivore had kicked in.

“He was really upsetting them, stressing them, and you really don’t want to stress your white-tailed deer,” Swinimer said. “It was an eight-foot-high wire fence. I didn’t think he’d climb it, but I suppose he could have, and I was kind of worried. And I was late for work.”

Swinimer reacted as she did when any of her animals threatened to cause a disaster. She isolated him from the problem.

“I didn’t want to sit at work for twelve hours worrying about whether Clifford was in the deer pen, and I knew I would if I just left this situation the way it was playing out here. So I just grabbed him, threw him into his old holding unit, and left him there all day.”

She received neither a bite nor a scratch. The bobcat still trusted her, but it would be the last time. Clifford’s old holding pen was the one adjacent to the house and the pantry window. Swinimer rushed off to her job at the Dartmouth Veterinary Hospital thinking the situation was under control and that she could straighten it out when she got home. However, she had forgotten to close the window. When she returned that evening, Swinimer could see Clifford inside the house, and what she saw was not the bobcat she knew. He was pacing back and forth with the mechanical, frustrated gait of a caged predator and when she opened the door, Clifford blew by her and was gone.

Clifford may have had what appeared to be housecat moments, but the wild was always in him and eventually took over.

“I never saw Clifford again,” said Swinimer. “I don’t know if it was locking him up and taking away his freedom for that twelve-hour period, but he never, ever came back. We still left our pantry window open for a good year and a half, but he never returned.”

As far as completing the task started with a tiny kitten more than a year before, the work had been done. Clifford was an adult and in the forest, avoiding humans of his own volition. He was, as far as anyone knew, wild and well.

The humans who knew him, however, kept open windows in their hearts long after he was gone. Allison Dube said people wanted to think of Clifford as alive and happy.

“Every time we pick up a dead or injured bobcat, we shudder and sort of freak out,” Dube said. “We never tagged him, so in the end we’ll never know, but with Clifford, I guess I don’t really want to know.”