Speaking of Wildlife

Ocellus the Resident Bobcat

by Jamie Proctor

Welcome to the fifteenth column describing the animals of Speaking of Wildlife: Ontario animals that can’t be released back into the wilderness of Ontario due to injuries or habituation to humans. Today we’ll be examining our most carnivorous mammal: Ocellus, the bobcat.

Bobcats (Lynx rufus) are the smallest of the three wild cats found in Canada, behind both the cougar/mountain lion/panther/catamount/puma/partridgeinapeartree (Puma concolor) and their close relative, the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis).

In case you’re wondering ‘How close?’, you can see from the naming scheme here that bobcats technically ARE lynxes, with both they and their larger neighbours sharing a genus with the bigger-still Iberian and Eurasian lynxes. The two can be told apart through a combination of size differences – lynxes are longer-legged, bigger-footed, and all-around larger – and small cosmetic details – the bobcat’s ear ‘tufts’ are smaller; instead of a black tail-tip it has little black bars; its legs are similarly black-barred; and its coat, although varied in colour, is normally browner than the more grey shades of the lynx.

Their distribution also extends much farther south; you can find bobcats living happily in all sorts of environments as far down as Oaxaca, though you probably won’t find them much farther north than their mid-Ontario range. Some of this is likely due to bobcats lacking the lynx’s lovely snowshoe flipper-feet that enable them to deal so adeptly with deep snow, which may mean increased northward expansion of bobcat ranges as climate change progresses onward.

Dietarily they remain very flexible inside the standard cat niche of hypercarnivory; their staple food tends to be whatever flavour of rabbit or hare is available but their opportunism extends to all kinds of rodents; eggs; birds of sizes up to and including adult trumpeter swans; peccaries; other carnivores or omnivores its size or smaller including raccoons or foxes; ungulates such as deer (primarily the young but occasionally including adults); carrion of any of the above; and, in at least one case identified by National Geographic, a small but very surprised shark.

They themselves are too large and relatively scarce to be a staple food item for anything, but opportunistic predation or competition-thinning from wolves, cougars, coyotes, bears, fishers, and alligators can take place; and of course, they’re much more vulnerable to this sort of attention as kittens, which can also add other predators like great horned owls or eagles to the list.

Despite all this and suffering the generic ills of humanity towards wildlife (habitat reduction and fragmentation; hunting; the exotic pet trade – but I’m getting ahead of myself), the bobcat population in total appears to be relatively healthy: they’re just too widely spread and good at being generalist carnivores to get pinned down in a bad spot as an entire species.

That said, just because they can make a home and find a meal anywhere doesn’t mean it’s easy to find them doing it; they’re usually as reclusive and hard to spot in their habitats as any other wild cat. Don’t expect to see them out there knocking over garbage cans with the raccoons.

Ocellus’s name comes directly from the ‘little eye’ patterns on his ears. His little physical being, on the other hand, comes from the exotic pet trade in the United States, where apparently what some people desire in a cat is for it to be bigger, crabbier, and more capable of killing something the size of a white-tailed deer. This is inadvisable for a number of very very obvious reasons, and so Ocellus’s escape from that particular set of circumstances as a kitten was something to be celebrated.

As befits a cat, he now spends much of his time sleeping, lounging, and basking, although on occasion he’s been spotted getting the zoomies from watching Maple (our coyote) running up and down her fence, and has reciprocated with brief play-sprints.

Ocellus is always the first of the outdoor carnivores to be fed by me on a shift, which he graciously reacts to with excitement and a variable amount of grumbling, whinging(?), and groaning, all of which sounds like a human doing a very bad impression of a cat due to his deep voice.

Other than this ceremonial complaining (designed to remind me and everyone else that this is HIS lunch, so we’d better not mess with him because listen to how tough he is) we have a perfectly professional working relationship, which has only ever once involved me becoming inadvertently and fractionally perforated. I released the pork chop at an unwise angle of approach and a little too slowly, thereby earning a single papercut. Neither of us bears a grudge over it.

That said, I sometimes wonder if he might be less grumpy at mealtimes if I didn’t insist on mumbling the chant of The Ramones’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ every time I feed him.

You can meet Ocellus and other inhabitants at Speaking of Wildlife during some of their open houses or other programming. Feel free to have your birthday party there! For more information on these and on opportunities to donate, or have some SOW animals at your next event, follow Speaking of Wildlife on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SpeakingOfWildlife or go to the website at www.speakingofwildlife.ca.