Alachua Bob (as in bobcat)
If I had to be an animal, I would want to be a bobcat. They are fearless, adaptable, resilient and far stronger than you would expect from a 25-pound cat. They are being hunted for their pelts and sport despite their very important role in keeping the rat and vermin populations in check. They are being pushed from their homes by urban sprawl and often are killed or permanently injured when crossing busy roads to access their hunting grounds. This is when they enter my life.
A call comes in late on Monday from the West End Animal Hospital in Alachua County. A couple of saintly (and amazingly brave) individuals discovered an adult, male bobcat that had been hit by a car and lived to tell the tale. The cat wasn’t going to live much longer though, and had crawled in a hole to die. He was in such bad shape that the Good Samaritans were able to load him up in a dog carrier and drive him to the local vet who was known to take in wildlife. Vets who are willing to take in non-paying customers, who seem all but grateful for the care, are rare enough indeed.
X-rays showed the pelvis to be shattered with little
or no hope of full recovery. Setting a broken bone is one thing, but the
recovery time that a wild animal needs in order to be back at peak performance
before being released can take months and very few facilities are equipped for
long term care. The vet assistant called Big Cat Rescue to see if
there was any chance that “Alachua Bob” could come to Tampa for recovery. She
explained that the bobcat’s injuries were such that he might never be able to
hunt and run due to his obvious advanced age and the extent of his fractures.
If he had to live a life in captivity, she knew there was no place closer to
living free than Big Cat Rescue.
As is the case with sanctuaries, all of our cages are already full of cast offs created mostly by the insanity of the pet trade. There are never enough funds to care for all of the animals that are in need. We have to turn away more than 300 big cats every year due to the lack of space and funding to properly care for them. There is nowhere else to go.
Alachua Bob got lucky and was delivered to our gates the next morning. Overnight, staff and volunteers transformed an old chicken coup into temporary living quarters with lots of places to hide and lots of soft hay. Room service delivers specially prepared meals to try and simulate the bobcat’s typical prey of rats and rabbits. He doesn’t have to drag his old and aching body for miles to reach water now because it’s just a paw’s reach away. He doesn’t have to know the agony of starving to death if he can’t catch his own food. He doesn’t have to be another victim of man’s inhumanity.
You can help Alachua Bob and others like him. You can help put an end to the surplus of large exotic cats needing sanctuary by putting a stop to people profiteering from them in the pet trade. U.S. Senators Jim Jeffords (I-VT) and John Ensign (R-NV) have introduced the Exotic Pets Bill, to ban interstate commerce of lions, tigers, leopards, cougars, and bears for the exotic "pet" trade. Ask your Senators to cosponsor this bill to protect animal welfare and public safety. Take action at: http://action.fund.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=1310
Stopping the overpopulation problem at it’s root
enables wildlife rehab facilities such as Big Cat Rescue to devote more
space and funds to native wildlife like Alachua Bob. You can also help by
volunteering, sponsoring an animal here or touring the facility. Your donations
will enable us to provide Alachua Bob with the more expensive, whole prey diet
he requires, his continued vet care, and if he cannot be released, the
construction of a 1200 square foot Cat-A-Tat full of trees and shrubs and lots
of great places to hide. For more info check out www.WildLifeOnEasyStreet.com or call (813) 920-4130 for tour times and
programs we offer. Donations can be mailed to 12802 Easy Street Tampa, FL
33625 SAFEinTheWild@aol.com
Update: 7/2003 Alachua Bob looked ready for release, so he was transferred to a much larger Cat-A-Tat to be sure he could climb the hills and trees in the enclosure and to be certain that he could catch his own food. Unfortunately, the vet has determined that his limp that is still keeping him from being able to run. The chicken that he was supposed to dispatch has now become his "pet". The good news is that he loves to swim and is utilizing the pool to work his legs in a manner that we did not think likely.
Bobcat Facts: 
This little cat was the most heavily
harvested and traded member of the cat family for the past 20 years. In the
1970’s CITES went into effect and the pelts of the Appendix 1 cats became
illegal and unobtainable, the price offered to trappers for a Bobcat pelt went
from $20.00 to $600.00. This also caused the number of Bobcats killed annually
to rise from 10,000 to over 90,000 by the 1980s. Thankfully, the interest in
Bobcat pelts today is declining due to international awareness of the cruel
methods of trapping and prohibitions against trade of animals trapped using
these methods. They also battle the ever growing human population and its
destruction of all habitat in its path. According to 2001 statistics provided
from actual sales of hunting permits, over 40,000 bobcats are still being killed
each year. This figure does not include all the bobcats killed by hunters who
do not buy licenses nor report their kills. Less than 6% of our population are
hunters but they kill over 100 million animals each year for sport.
2/5/03 Carole Baskin, Founder
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