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We would like you all to meet Bob, the bobcat, and Sweet Pea, his adoptive momma cat. Bob was brought to the Sarge's Animal Rescue Foundation by a good Samaritan who just wanted to help him. According to Love Meow, this woman had seen a mother bobcat near her house the previous stormy night, but the day after that, for some reason, the baby bobcat was abandoned and left alone. "He was found as an orphan," explained Erica Chacon of Sarge's Animal Rescue Foundation.
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The woman who rescued Bob had tried to wait for his momma to return, but when she didn't, she did the only thing she thought of, which was rescuing Bob and taking him to the shelter. As a baby bobcat, who was only a few days old, having a nursing mom was critical for survival. It was pure luck that on the same day that Bob was brought in, a stray momma cat was rescued, along with her five kittens. Suddenly, there was a solution and a whole lot of hope. The timing couldn't have been better.
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"She had five kittens of her own at the time," Chacon told The Dodo. "So it was nothing to her to add another one. She didn't think anything of it." It took no more than 15 minutes for the itty bitty bobcat to bond with his adoptive mom and start nursing. After that, it was obvious that things would be alright. "The day I got [Bob], I contacted our local wildlife biologist and told him about the scenario," Chacon said. "He said that was the best scenario that could happen because bottle-feeding a bobcat for that long, you'd never be able to release him back into the wild."
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"She just adored him and he adored her," Chacon recounted her experience with the two felines. "It was amazing." It took Bob a little longer than Sweet Pea's other kittens to to wean, but eventually, he did, and he thrived having a surrogate mom like her. She was incredibly affectionate and loving, raising him as if he was one of her own babies. Now, it was a matter of getting a Bob to become stronger and more confident so he could be reintroduced back to the wild.
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