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  • Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza Four weeks old: Jamie Booe, officer manager at Pet Care Animal Hospital, holds the pair of female bobcat kittens brought into the hospital Tuesday. At right is veterinarian Nancy Schenck.

    MET 091112 BOB BOOE.jpg

  • Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza Huddle together: A bobcat kitten peeks out from behind blankets as it snuggles with a sibling in a cage at Pet Care Animal Hospital on Tuesday.

    MET 091112 BOB BLANKET.jpg

  • Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza Tell-tale tail: While the bobcat kittens might look like your average house cats, the short tail gives them away.

    MET 091112 BOB TAIL.jpg

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September 13, 2012

Wild Things: Baby bobcats being cared for at Pet Care Animal Hospital

Howard Greninger The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — Veterinarian Nancy Schenck sees kittens every day in her job, but Tuesday brought a unique experience — two baby bobcats.

Indiana Conservation Officer Jason Sullivan brought the wild animals to the Pet Care Animal Hospital, 2701 S. Seventh St., because the Terre Haute facility has a licensed wildlife rehabilitator.

“We will hold them for a few days just to make sure they are healthy, that they are eating and have a bowel movement,” Schenck said Tuesday.

Both bobcats are female, and Schenck estimates their age at 4 weeks old. They weigh about 1 pound, 8 ounces.

Schenck is feeding them “acute care diet,” a canned food which is a mixture of protein and carbohydrates used in the short-term for cats or dogs recovering from an illness.

“We just want to build up their energy a little,” the veterinarian said.

The bobcats will next go to a licensed wildlife rehabilitator affiliated with the animal hospital, who will make sure the animals learn how to hunt for food and feed themselves. Once that skill has been mastered, the bobcats will be released back into the wild.

Sullivan received a call at 10 p.m. Monday about the bobcats. A farmer in southern Vigo County had pulled up a stump and found a bobcat den. The farmer “heard the cats in there and waited to make sure the mother was not there. The cats crawled out and he took them and called us,” the state conservation officer said.

Sullivan said he picked up the baby bobcats, put them in a box and kept them overnight at his home.

“My wife and son did not want to give them up. They sat down on the floor and played with them,” Sullivan said. “It is a unique experience, a once in a lifetime thing to be playing with baby bobcats.”

Sullivan said he has come across dead bobcats, killed by vehicles, but the baby bobcats were the first he has seen alive. “One was a little raspy, a little more spirited than the other. You can definitely tell they are wild animals,” he said.

Scott Johnson, a nongame biologist for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, said the state does not have bobcat population estimates, but it does monitor the number of deaths, mostly as a result of vehicle accidents.

“We use that as a kind of surrogate index of the population,” Johnson said. “In 2011, we had 74 mortality reports of the cats, the majority struck by vehicles. There were 72 in 2010, but it has been really going up in the last two or three years and up steadily in the last eight or 10 years.”

“The increase in numbers that we see in Indiana is also paralleled in other Midwestern states such as in Illinois and Iowa, more agricultural regions,” Johnson said. “When you look at the distribution of bobcats in North America, it is pretty widespread, which tells you that they are pretty adaptable as far as cover types or habitats.

“You find them in deserts, deciduous woods and bottom land hardwoods. All they need is a little cover and prey, which is primarily rabbits and small mammals” such as mice or even squirrels, Johnson said.

The one area bobcats are not found is densely populated areas and intensively farmed land. “They have come back in parts of the Midwest where agricultural lands have been reverted back to fields or scrubby areas,” he said.

Bobcats are indigenous to Indiana and can range in length from 30 to 50 inches and stand about 2 feet tall. Males weigh 25 to 30 pounds and females 12 to 15 pounds, Johnson said.

Bobcats usually have litters of two to three cats in late April or early May, but can have a second liter in September or later. “They have the potential to breed anytime of the year,” Johnson said.

Bobcats live 10 to 12 years in the wild.

Indiana classified the bobcat as endangered in 1969, but removed the bobcat from that list in 2005. “They are still listed as a species of special concern for the time being, a sort of watch list, but they are no longer in jeopardy of disappearing from the state,” Johnson said.

This year, there have been confirmed sightings of bobcats in 52 of Indiana’s 92 counties, Johnson added.

Reporter Howard Greninger can be reached at 812-231-4204 or howard.greninger@

tribstar.com.

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