Jument: DROxINxTHExWIND: They're serpents with fur.

I've always thought it funny that if you put your hand over the back of a cats head and flatten down their ears, they look vaguely serpent-ish. My wife is irrationally terrified of snakes and gets really made if I do that to our cats, even if I'm just stroking them and for a second unintentionally make them look snakey.

The fantasy writer Tanith Lee in one of her most obscure masterpieces has a marvelous Aesop-like tale of how serpents became cats to make people like them more (adding legs and fur because people found crawling and scales repellent, losing venom from thier fangs but adding claws for protection etc) and you know this tale is true she says, because if you startle a cat, just for a second it will forget itself and hiss at you.

Thanks, moron Samaritan. Because you couldn't just let animal control deal with it, your actions just got the poor thing killed. Nice going.

I told the following story late in a thread about a month ago, and I'm still too half-awake to tell it again, so I'm gonna just cut & paste:

I was returning from the Bay Area on a college scouting trip to my home in the "real" Northern California (real Northern California starts just north of Redding for you flatlander's information), and as we were driving over the mountain that is between us and the nearest town, we saw my step-dad's Ranchero stopped with its emergency flashers on, blocking the uphill lane. I had the people I was riding with drop me off, and they went on.

I walked in front of the car, and saw that my step-dad was standing guard over a mountain lion that had been hit by the car ahead of him. It was lying there with its eyes glazed and open, as if dead. He reached over and touched its eye with a stick to see if it responded to stimuli, and it did. It sat up and almost took his face off. Fortunately (unfortunately?) it had a broken pelvis, and couldn't move far enough to get him. I figger it still took a few years off the old man's life. :)

My step-dad then called a CHP officer he knew on the CB radio, and they sent the animal control officer out, and he tranquilized the cat and we helped place her in a bear cage. It turned out to be a pregnant female, about 80 pounds and she had two kittens while in captivity, and five months later, we got invited to see her and her offspring released back into the wild.


A friend of mine (true mountain man type; raised in a cabin with no electricity or running water, in the woods), once raised two bobcat kittens after their mother was killed. Bobcats don't make good pets. They tear shiat up, and never truly domesticate. One of them jumped on top of their hot woodstove and burned the pads off all four feet. It lived, but that was one miserable pissed off bandaged ball of fur for awhile. Mark Twain was right, once a cat has jumped on a hot stove, they'll never attempt to jump on a cold stove either.

Box it up and ship it to somebody who's ordered an office chair from your eBay page.


Jeez, I thought everybody knew that one.

Mom's anurse, and in the times i've been with her at the scene of roadside accident (she always stops unless EMTS are on scene), shes got the nerves of combat medic when treating injuries. No matter how gruesome, she just stays calm collected and efficent. The same woman cannot handle a wounded or sick animal AT ALL, she bursts into tears and goes t pieces when confronted with one. I tied to figure this dichotomy out once and she said simply "because a huamn understands you are trying to help, even if it hurts, an animal can't"

Which is a DAMN good reason to be super-careful when dealing with any hurt animal that is also of a size to do you significant bodily harm (which is pretty much a hampster on up)

Injured bobcat lays lies dying on the side of the road. Do you A) Call Animal Control. B) Ignore it and go on with your day. C) Get your dumb face in real close to make sure it's okay

FIFY

MarkEC: Also, why don't people get inoculations for rabies so we don't have to worry about getting bit by wildlife that has rabies???????

The rabies vaccine effectiveness declines over time. Even with a person who has received a rabies booster shot in the past (likely in their youth) - you still need another round of shots if you get bitten by anything that might carry rabies, and you need it as soon as you get bitten.

The real progress in reducing rabies over the past half-century was by giving domesticated pets the shots because it stopped the most effective manner of transfer.

Magorn: Godamnlimey: DROxINxTHExWIND: Tanith Lee

The parable of the cat (new window)
/Cats is bastids

This is why I love fark so much: I cite a half-remembered tale I found in an old, out-of-print book I snagged a library cast-off sale 15 years ago, and the electrons are barely dry on the post before someone has a link up. Well done.

Seconded.

Godamnlimey: DROxINxTHExWIND: Tanith Lee

The parable of the cat (new window)
/Cats is bastids

This is why I love fark so much: I cite a half-remembered tale I found in an old, out-of-print book I snagged a library cast-off sale 15 years ago, and the electrons are barely dry on the post before someone has a link up. Well done.

I love me some bobcats! Have some land out in the mountains and they're all over the place out there... along with tons of turkey, eagles, blue herons and of course deer. Once in a blue moon you can catch a sight of a mountain lion, but they're more elusive than Sasquatch.

Last time I came across a bobcat out there I was taking a hike through the property on a trail we had layed; guy is lounging on a large branch right on the trails' edge, head resting on one of his paws while the other 3 legs were dangling off the branch... had an Alice in Wonderland moment. It helped that I was currently smoking a joint.

DROxINxTHExWIND: Tanith Lee

The parable of the cat (new window)
/Cats is bastids

JackieRabbit: The bobcat, like all cats, is not a high-risk species. In fact they have a rather low risk.

Most animals listed as "high risk for rabies" aren't really high risk - they get that distinction because they've bitten/attacked a human. It really should read "bobcats that attack humans are considered a high risk for rabies."

Of course, that's not even true in this case, because the animal didn't bite her out of the blue, it bit her because she approached it while it was injured.

Jument: Heck, try this with an average house cat and you could still end up with a pretty serious bite wound.

Speaking as someone who spent a night in the hospital getting stitches and antibiotics because of a house cat, I'm getting a kick...

Rabies shots will be about as fun as a napalm enema.

Because the bobcat is in a high-risk category for rabies, and it bit someone, its fate is already determined.

Nothing worse than a rabid washed up 80s comedian