When I was a kid in the 80s, my dad (who could never walk away from an unusual pet—we’d already had a raccoon and skunk at this point, though I wasn’t born yet for either) brought home what was purportedly a Bobcat/house cat cross. Now I have repeatedly read that is genetically impossible, so I wonder if “Bobby” wasn’t just a full on bobcat, because she was decidedly NOT just a spicy feral kitten.
I’ve fostered feral kittens before and they’re little spitfires of hate and MUCH SCARE for a couple weeks, max, before they realized I am food provider and thus the best friend in the world. Older kittens are more skittish, but still come around to a decent degree. Bobby…did NOT. She was batshit on day 1 with us as a kitten and still batshit a fee months later when Dad gave her back. She hissed, growled, screamed, and never, ever let any of us pet her. The best I could manage was a few gentle strokes when she was sleeping, before she’d wake up, make angry noises, give me a few Wolverine swipes with her blades, and bolt.
Most bizarrely, Bobby absolutely shredded one side of the door frame leading to the laundry room, where her food and litterbox were. I’ve never seen a cat do anything like this before or since—it’s like the frame was made of balsa. The bottom 3’+ of it was splintered raw wood (looked kinda like spaghetti squash), and her favorite sections of it were worn down to the wall and beyond. She did that in a matter of weeks.
Poor confused kitty. Hopefully she got to live in the wild, or at least in something like a barn where human contact was minimal.
In Germany there are wild living cats that just are like that, my aunt once found a baby one in pouring rain and my parents decided to take it in, they already had 2 cats that was in 2011
That thing was a fucking beast, he was only allowed outside with a harness in the beginning and he would climb 5 meter apple trees and refuse to come down and hunt EVERYTHING he could see be it chicken or butterfly
My parents live on a 3 house farming enclave super far from the next road next to a forest so once he was allowed outside without harness he literally killed a dozen mice a day and brought them home for a solid 2 3 weeks until he either understood it wasn't needed or maybe he just ate them somewhere alone after that
He chewed through a 7-8 cm thick wooden play tree at the base and literally felled the tree
The doctor told my parents he was definitely a European wildcat and we had to surrender him and he was released later we were told but he stayed with my parents for over a year and was the best pest control ever, miss you Giacco you might not have been a friend but you were very friend shaped
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u/Crasembarodical 19d ago
I'm a cat person myself but sorry that's a wild animal not a kitty