Bobcat Rescue
Ace sat down slowly on the concrete because her frail old body had lost the padding of well muscled flesh. She was old and her sight was failing, but still she stared out toward the bay and remembered…
She had lived here her entire life. Ace had a family once, a long time ago, but now they were all gone. She used to have friends and spend time enjoying the great open spaces of the land that had been handed down to her generation after generation, but those friends were long gone as well. Her grandmother and her grandmother’s grandmothers had hunted and fished here. Now the water was polluted, the forests were gone and the sound of wildlife was only an echo in her mind.
In 1545 when Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, a Spanish lad had shipwrecked here he probably didn’t seem like much of a threat to Ace’s forefathers. No one could have guessed that the ancient Indians who lived here would one day be driven onto reservations. Who would have thought that the land that teemed with life and abundance would one day be buried beneath asphalt, concrete, office buildings, super highways, air port runways and parking garages?
Fast forward to 2007 and Big Cat Rescue begins getting calls that a bobcat is living in the midst of all of this development. The callers are all worried that she will be hit by a car. They see her slinking into dumpsters in broad daylight now, looking for any scrap of food. Some fear her and others fear for her, but she is brave and proud and holds out until she just can’t survive this way any longer.
As if to surrender, as her Native American friends did so many years ago, she lays down in front of the door to Ace Realty. She is too old, too tired and too starved to fight for her freedom any longer.
The employees at Ace Realty call Big Cat Rescue to the scene. She knows she can’t live here any more, but fear over comes her at the sight of people coming for her with nets. She doesn’t know their hearts and she makes a feeble attempt to flee, but there is no where to go. It is all cars and people and pavement. Racing into the street a net stops her short...
Big Cat Rescuers caught a severely emaciated bobcat wandering in the middle of an office park in Tampa near the airport. Jamie Veronica and Scott Lope followed up on reports in the Bay Area of bobcats being hit by cars and dying. But this one could be called a miracle cat -- "It's our first rescue of a bobcat that wasn't injured." Scott Lope, our manager said, "There's the instant gratification feeling that we did rescue this animal from certain death. She had no where to go and was surrounded by traffic, but then there's a bit of a sadness". Sadness that the place she once called home is gone. We plan to nurse the bobcat back to health and release her into the wild.
She was moved to the secluded rehab cage where we had success in rehabbing former resident Faith (now released and thriving) for Faith's complete story click HERE To read updates on Ace, check below the video.
Read about three other bobcats who were rescued within the same four week period at Bobcat Rescues.
Fox 13 transcript: Development drove cat into office park, rescuers say
Created: Thursday, 16 Aug 2007, 11:09 PM EDT
Rescuers found a bobcat wandering in the middle of an office park in
Tampa near the airport. We've got you covered
TAMPA - When Scott Lope got a call from Center Point Business Park about a bobcat being spotted there, he feared the worst.
"I assumed that since this animal isn't running away, since its in the vicinity of people, that it's been hit by a car, severely injured -- not an animal that's going to make it," he said.
He got there and found the bobcat, and to his surprise, the cat was very much alive. Lope also found dozens of people watching it, in amazement.
"As we approached it did perk up a little bit -- it made efforts to get away from us, but it was very emaciated and very and very weak condition, you can tell it hadn't eaten in quite a while," Lope said.
Lope is the director of Big Cat Rescue, and has been working to save cats like this one for ten years now.
Lope says the reason the bobcat ended up at that business park: more development. In this case, rescuers say new construction of the interchange near Tampa International Airport moved the bobcat out of its habitat.
"There are still a few pockets of wood, there's a few parks probably living there and as every square inch gets developed, every bit of greenery gets plowed under for parking lots and new buildings -- these guys just don't have anywhere to go," Lope said.
Lope followed up on reports in the Bay Area of bobcats being hit by cars and dying. But this one could be called his miracle cat -- it's their first rescue of a bobcat that wasn't injured.
"There's the instant gratification feeling that we did rescue this animal from certain death. It had no where to go it was surrounded by traffic, but then there's a bit of a sadness," Lope said. Sadness that the place he once called home is gone. Big Cat Rescue plans to nurse the bobcat back to health and release it into the wild.
Jim Hill, Fox 13 News
8/17/07 Update: As you can see in the video the bobcat is severely emaciated and the initial vet exam shows her to be very old and possibly suffering from cataracts. She is eating and drinking, probably for the first time in a very long time, and is still too weak to even mount a full throated threat. She will be treated as a candidate for rehab and release and kept away from people until she stabilizes enough to re evaluate her condition.
Today she is moving from the West-Boensch Cat Hospital at Big
Cat Rescue to the secluded rehab cage where Faith grew up. Volunteers
and Interns have been working all morning to create a boma for her to
hide in and lots of perches, caves and other things to keep her alert
and exercising her muscles.
Since the bobcat had dropped in exhaustion on the steps of Ace Realty and they called Big Cat Rescue to ask us to help her, we have named the cat Ace. If you call or email to check on her, you can now do so by name. We keep the public away from rehab animals, so that they do not become too nonchalant in the presence of people, so you won't be able to visit her, but we often leave surveillance cameras running so that we can monitor their progress.
If there is any way that she can go free, even if just to live out another couple of years in the wild, that is our goal. If she cannot get a clean bill of health saying that he can fend for herself then she will have a retirement that other wild cats could only dream of.
9/17/07 Update: The bobcat is doing well enough that Big Cat Rescuers feel she can be released soon. Ace was sedated today for a last run of blood tests and to have her ear tipped as a universal symbol that she is a cat in a release program and not fair game for hunters. As soon as Chance the baby bobcat is cleared to be moved outside he will go into the rehab cage next to her to continue to imprint on his own kind before being released.
4/24/08 Update: Sadly Ace's blood work came back positive for Feline Aids and if she were to be released she could infect and kill an entire population of bobcats. It is a slow and agonizing death for cats who are on their own and given her advanced age we have decided to allow her to live out the rest of her good months in peace and quiet at Big Cat Rescue. When her health begins to deteriorate to the point of affecting her quality of life, then we will humanely euthanize her.
The good news is that today, Chance the bobcat had recuperated to the point that he could be released. Watch him as he runs back to a life of freedom in the video below.