And then proceed to help as best as a cat can, with warmth and love, cuddling and closeness. Īsk anyone who has ever been owned by a cat and you’ll learn that these remarkable animals seem to sense when a person is anxious or depressed or even ill. And the Japanese relied on an expression called e-shin, den-shin, or messages sent from one mind to another through shared feelings. The ancient Greeks with a special form of communication they called “telepathy,” when a perception or feeling was believed to be transmitted by thought or feeling. One of the greatest questions of mankind has been, can animals and humans communicate? In 1978 there was a celebrated experiment with Koko, the gorilla, and his person where each seemed to “know” what the other wanted. This I concluded by judging his response to various situations and his ability to learn and react to verbal instructions. To my delighted surprise, I discovered in only a few weeks that my cat possessed a superior brain. Like humans, cats possess their own personalities and function at different intelligence levels. But how would anyone domesticate a wild creature? Would it be an impossible task undertaken in the effort to save him? I understood that each situation and each animal is different. Beginning in the 1990s, a growing middle class in China and Russia had created the demand for luxury furs, the then favorite being the bobcat’s shiny and beautiful pelt.Īnd so I decided that returning this cat to the wild was tantamount to a death sentence. There were mostly shot by hunters or poachers lacking permits and functioning out of hunting season. Over 10,200 bobcats had been trapped or killed in the year before I found my kitten. The deciding factor came from alarming statistics supplied by the Nevada Department of Wildlife Conservation. Could he remain alive in a desert that provided such limited food and water? And then my cat had lost his own mother before he reached the age of two months. Unlike African lions, for example-such as Elsa, forever immortalized in the film Born Free-a bobcat does not belong to a pride, nor does it need any group to help learn survival skills. Could our cat eventually behave like a house pet if offered the same environment? Bobcats are loners once they leave their mother’s care. My considerations also included knowing that genetically the bobcat is closely related to domestic felines. And then decide whether to return to the wild or remain with us. Our family bobcat (as he became) would always be given freedom to come and go as he pleased. Is it fair to tame and keep a bobcat as a pet? Or should it be released, returned to the wild once it is strong enough to survive on its own? I had seriously considered all options before deciding to raise this particular feline as a member of my family, to live in my home, which, as it happened, is located at the edge of the Mojave Desert. Keeping a wild critter is illegal in some states others have strict restrictions or require specific permits for their live possessions. they are wild animals, even when captured very young, are not easily domesticated and seldom make good pets. He was not an ordinary feline, but a kitty from the wild - a bobcat, as such creatures are called in many parts of the U.S. And as all friends need to do, we learned many things from one another. And we remained close companions for 19 years. We met in the Mojave Desert near the glittering city of Las Vegas, when he was very young, and I not so young. Once upon a time, not long ago, I had a most unusual friend.

Wild cat paw print clip art